c 


<^ ec 


'^*^ 


^3 




CLC 


X ' 


i 




<C^Cc 


cC ' 


^ 


j:. 


^Cc 


CC 


^ 


,^^ 


c:xt 


<C' 


^ 




^ t] 


'' '^'^.^ 


4 




<c c 


•:C' ^ 

c 0L 

c €C 


(^<^" 


tCC 


< 0C 


cc 




c<iC 




< c 


C 4Ci 


cc 


' c C 


C< 


Id 


n 


a 

re 


Xd 


^.^ 









c c •- 






3<:< C<I 



fec:c<r 






^LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 



|! UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f 






^^ 












:?, <<«; C' 
c: est; "^ 






c_ c cc <<C 





c^ 


^ 


V c< 


"■ -C <X 


> ■ 


c^ CC 


( 


cc 


'"' , 


. cc 


^ « 


C<L 


r c 


<X 


[T* 


f CC 


*:' < 


Ct 


& 


ct: 




cc 


c, 


cc 




<x 


^ 


c< 


C? 


cc: 


CL 


cc 


<: 


cc 


<z 


cc 


c? 


CC 


c 


CC 


c 


CC 


c 


cc 



P^ <1C<C<1 


^^ ' 


L_ 


^.cc^ 




^ cccc^C 


d ■ ^ 


^_ 


^ -ccc<r 


d < 


"S^ 


<^ c 


__ 


^ <.<LC^. 


cr <i^ 


4(SLC^lCl_ 


<Z' o 




^^ 


: ^^ 


CC<L 




c^ c: 


'€tC<CL 


d C 


: "^^ 


c c 




c c 


~-^ ^g^CC4^'_ 


c c 


ifij^sicz^ 


cc 


^CC^iCi- 


cc 


^ ■^Ci*9dZ_ 


cc 


H' - ^ ^CJl^KH^ 


c< 


^T" ^j|^~ 


cc 


^CT ^SCZ^ 


cc 


<^ «E: 


cc 

cc 


%<^ 


cc 

_ cc 


c^ <_ ^^ ^I3i[ 


C_ <- 


' C C <r C 4K3[ 


m: 



f 






fit?*- 



J^ 



J^ >^l^4. 'W ^r'2ea/£4 Ad-lt U>li-C ^LOd^i^i a-li^^if . 



ILIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 

I ^^/e ::■,.;■ } 

I ^^¥ i 



! — — 5 

I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



A NOTE 

ON THE 

SUPPRESSION OF MEMOIRS 

ANNOUNCED BY THE AUTHOR 
IN JUNE, 1825 ; 

CU.MAININC NUMEROUS STRICTtRES 07\ COTEilPORARY PfELlG 
CHARACTERS. 






BY 



SIR EGERTON BRYDGES^ BART. 



/\ 



ETC., ETC. 




J,WASH^ 

PARIS, "^ 

PRIMED BY J. SMITH, RIE MOTnTMORENCY, NO. 16. 



Sept. 1825. 



SmiMARY OF CONTENTS. 



Page, 

1. Motive of present Note 1 

2. Topics of suppressed memoirs 2 

3. Late criticisms on the author ib» 

4. Mrs. Barbauld ib. 

5. Her poems * . . . . 5 

6. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter lb, 

7. Author of Waverley , ib, 

8. Literary merit comparative 4 

9. State of modern literature ib, 

10. Literary Journals ib, 

11. William Mitford 5 

12. Quarterly and Westminster Revieyvs ib> 

13. Blackwood's and old Monthly Magazines. . « 6 

14. William Gifford ib. 

15. Political Economy ib, 

16. Davenant, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus 7 

17. Licentiousness of the Press ib, 

18. Edinburgh Review lb. 

19. Poetical Criticism and Johnson's Lives 8 

20. Gibbon's Life lb* 

21. Lord Orford's character 8, 9 

22. Gray's character 10 

25. Tom Warton's and Joe Warton's character 11 



ir CONTENTS. 

24. Cumberland's Life . , . 11 

25, Unequal society ...» 12 

26* Beattie's character ...,., ib. 

27. Mrs. Barbauld's Letters 13 

28. French Revolution lb, 

29. Its eflPects on literary criticism 14 

30. Monthly Review 15 

31. Foreign Journals lb, 

32. Influence of Reviews 16 

33. Authors in society ib. 

34. William Combe's character* 17 

35. Dr. Darwin's character , 18 

36. Miss Seward's poems. 19 

37. Pope^ Gray^ Collins, Warburton, Lowth ib. 

38. Mrs. Barbauld on prejudice 19, 20 

39 . Edinburgh Review 22 

40. Whig families and Tory families ib. 

41. King James's peers 23 

42. Civil Wars ib, 

43. Modern peerages ib. 

44. Bubb Doddington and Lord Egmont 23, 24 

-45. Lord North's peers ib, 

46. Lords' jurisdiction ib, 

47. Foreign ideas of British nobility 25 

48. Catalogue of the older male peerages according 

to date 25, 26 

49. Old nobles do not form a set 27 

50. A late claim of peerage ib, 

51. Lords' Committee an inconvenient tribunal to try 

facts ib. 

52. Scale of landed properties 28 

55. Lord Grosvenor, Lord Burleigh, Lord Thanet . . . . 29 

54. Nature of English rank ib^ 

55. English soci( ty abroad 30 



CO.MENT^. ^' 

56. Dandy reviewers « • . . 50 

57. Lord Byron's manliness contrasted with Gray. ... 51 

58. Bloomfield's character i^. 

59. Sir Joseph Bankes 52 

60. Sir Alexander Boswell, James his brother, and 

James his father , lb» 

61. Johnson drawn by Mrs. Barbauld's pen 55 

62. Criticism on it t^. 

63. Mrs. Montagu by the same 54 

64. Criticism on it , 55 

65. Ferney, Coppet, Coligny. . . ^ 56 

66. Temporary authors t6. 

67. Rolliad, and French Laurence • i^* 

68. Mathias and Dr. Glyn 37 

69. Rowleian controversy lb, 

70. Letters of Junius (6, 

71. Objections to the supposition that Lord Sackville 

wrote them c^. 

72. Ascribed to Richard Glover 58 

73. Grenvilles ib, 

74. Temporary puppets of state 39 

75. Queen Elizabeth's ministers ib, 

76. Pope and Lisle Bowles 4^ 

77. Sir Walter Scott : . ib. 

78. Charlotte Smith ib. 

79. Lord Chesterfield's character 4i 

80. His son's character , 42 

81. Walter Harte ib. 

82. True value of birth . . l(,, 

83. Effects of Pitt's administration on the aristocracy. 43 

84. Vast augmentations of the peerage 44 

85. Inheritable merit 45 

86. German quarters in descent lb, 

87. Arguments in favour of birth. . 4^ 



VI COA'TENTS. 

88. Mixture in fashionable society 7........ v.. !^ 

89. Occasional abuses of high birth, 4S 

90. Prevailing character of oratory in Parliament 4^ 

91. What is now called philosophy. t6. 

92. Old families abandon their hold 50 

93. Productive and unproductive labourers /6. 

94. Increased expenses in modern life 51 

95. Members of the peerage t^. 

96. Classes whence new peers have been taken 52 

97. French Peerage 55 

98. Size of English estates ib* 

99. A nobleman's rental, temp. Ch. I • 54 

iOO. Npw properties soon spent «<&. 

101. Sound judgment, rare ib. 

102. Idle talkers lb. 

1-03* Collins, Langhorne, and CLurchill 56 

104. Praise of poetry. lb. 

405. Subjects for good poetry, abundant 57 

106. Parry's hast Days of Lord Byron ib, 

107. Furnishes plain and strong facts in Lord Byron's 

favour. ., lb. 

108. Patriotic opinions proved by acts 58 

109. Lord Byron unfairly censured lb. 

110. An enemy to hypocrisy 59 

111. Inclined to be coarse ► *. lb. 

112. Faulty passages in Don Juan lb. 

113. His memoirs were coarse 60 

114. Proofs from his latter life that he was not selfish. . . lb. 

115. His merits in Greece alone sufficient to immor- 

talize him 61 

116. His strange love to appear wicked 62 

117. His viciousness of heart denied lb. 

118. Bysshe Shelley ib. 

119. Lord Byron had reason for his spleen , 05 



CONTENTS. ^ >H 

420. His inconsistencies. ^^ 

ill. The note-\Triter*s study of biography €4 

122. Whether Lord Byron had sound cause of hope as 

to Greece «^« 

123. Treacheries towards him in this enterprise* t5. 

124. Calumnies ventured when he was dead 65 

125. Vulgar cries against him 66 

126. Greek Committee i^» 

127. Modern Books praised from interested motives. . . 67 

128. Conjectures as to the success of Lord Byron's poetry 6S 

129. Mr. Murray, Mr. Colbourne t^- 

130. Lord Byron's domestic misfortunes 69 

131. His retreat to Switzerland l^» 

132. Identified vvith his poetry ^ ....... . 70 

133. His love of true glory t^« 

134. Pleasure in owning our failings ib. 

135. Ordinary poets ..*..,*...-.. — 71 

136. Akenside^ Shenstone, Goldsmith, Young lb. 

137. Manfred, Cain, Heaven and Earth 72 

138. Lord Byron proud of his descent lb. 

139. Where true nobility ends 75 

140. Mavrocordato ...» lb, 

141. French Literature • . . , 74 

142. Madame de Genlis's character : 74, 75 

143. Petrarch and De Sade 75 

144. Miss Edgeworth , . 76 

145. Bad taste of the public lb, 

146. Descent to newspaper literature.. .; lb, 

147. Bastard philosophy . , , , 77 

148. Charlatanic authors lb, 

149. Duties of literature 78 

150. Travels, tours, and voyages ....;...... lb, 

151. First impressions deceitful , , 79 

152. Book-making ^ lb. 



THi CONTENTS. 

155, Temporary topics ........,...•./,,;.... 79 

154. Genius and sensibility inseparable , ib, 

155. Servility to the great 8a 

156. Fashion-loving poets lb, 

157. Sickly sentiment ib, 

158. Probable imagination may be visionary 81 

159. Affectations in poetry ib, 

160. High flights justified 82 

161. Charr or of Wordsworth 83 

162. His Prefaces 84 

163. Opinions formed from complex sources 85 

164. Sophistries of the age necessitate vigilant caution, ib, 

165. Anecdotes mislead 86 

166. Future memoirs half promised • ib~, 

167. Their proposed objects ... - ,...,., ib. 

168. Count Segur's remark on old French aristocracy. . ib, 

169. Note-writer's retired habits, and present feelings 87 

170. Claims candour for difference of opinion 88 

171. His endeavours in literature. . » ib. 

172. His opinion of public corruption ib, 

173. Topsy-turvy in English society 89 

174. True fountains of old nobility 90 

175. Debrett's peerage lb, 

176. Percys and Nevilles 91 

177. Suppression of announced Fragments of Memoirs^ 

a cause of self-approbation ib, 

178. End n 



ADVERTISEMENTc 



The Reader is requested not to assume, with- 
out examination, that this Note consists of 
light matter. If it extends only to four sheets, 
it traverses a large field of remark. It may 
be said to ramble : but it is hoped that the 
associations will be found to be natural, and 
not unjust. Something of severity will perhaps 
be ascribed to them ; and many will add, 
something of spleen. Several of the opinions 
will be so unpalatable in the present state of 
society, that the author is quite prepared to 
expect a great deal of opposition and ill-will 
in those quarters. He protests against the 
main points of what he has here said of Lord 
Byrori being charged as a repetition of that 

a 2 



^ ADVERTISEMENT. 

which he has said on former occasions. In 
this Note, his character, not as a poet, but as 
a practical patriot, is attempted to be brought 
forward in its due strength ! 
, What it is useful to give to the Public, and 
what is mere idle expence of type, ink, and 
paper, requires a nicer discrimination than the 
generality of readers will attend to. Rectitude 
of opinion goes far in the constitute of human 
happiness; and still more certainly, — ^of human 
morahty : — even in matters of taste, rectitude 
of judgment is highly essential to the graces, 
and perhaps to the enjoyments, of life. These 
can only be kept in their right course by the 
superintendance and influence of frank and 
independent minds, capable of solid observa- 
tion, and always on the watch. The Public 
Press was never so dangerous as it is at present, 
because its productions are now written only 
to flatter popular prejudices and passions;—- 
not to correct them. I consider him who lives^ 
by prostituting h:s mind for lucre, to be far 



ADVERTISEMENT. ^l 

more criminal, more base, and more con- 
temptible than the vmhappy female who sells 
her person for a subsistence ! 

Authorship is become a mere piece of dull 
mechanism : a man of very mean talents and 
acquirements may become a very successful 
book-writer, by making' himself the vehicle of 
certain party or sectarian doctrines : or by 
putting together vulgar stories suited to feeble 
intellects. But that is strictly true, which I 
think Mason somewhere records Gray to have 
said, that ^^ to be a good writer not only re- 
quires high talents, but the very best of those 
talents.^^ 

It is not necessary that the substance of 
what is said, should not have been said before : 
— that is scarcely possible in moral truths:— 
if it has not been said before^ the chances are 
that it is not a truth. But it is necessary that 
it should be said— not from memory — but from 
conviction resulting from the operations of the 
author's oivn mind. Nor is this all: — it is 



^i ADVERTISEMENT. 

necessary that it should be said clearly and 
forcibly; and that the matter or subject should 
be important in itself. 

The result of all the conflicting statements, 
arguments^ criticisms and judgments of all the 
modern Journals and Reviews is, to blow up 
all fixed opinions into the air, to be scattered 
about like autumn leaves in a whirlwind. All 
influence of Genius and master-minds has 
passed away. The multitude hug themselves^ 
in crying out: *^ see — it is all idle boast ! the 
opinions of these intellectual boasters are not 
a whit better than our own!^^ 

It is quite impossible that any Review can 
be honest, which is a?ionjmous. If the name 
of the author were subscribed to an article of 
criticism, the purpose for which it was written 
would be seen at once ! Every severe article 
in the fashionable Journals would have been 
defeated of its effect, if the writer's name had 
been known. At present, I never hear a li- 
terary opinion uttered in any company, wliich 



ADVERTISEMENT. Xiu 

is not taken from one of the Reviews. I am 
myself firmly persuaded, that no inconsiderable 
portion of articles in all the modern Reviews 
come within the penalties of the laiv of libels /* 
Lord Byron had opportunities to obtain verdicts 
over and over again. 

As to the present state of society, with regard 
to its classes, of which I shall probably be 
accused of having spoken with a bigoted seve- 
rity, the gambling mania of Joint-Stock Com- 
panies, which raged during the last winter, has 
begun at length to open the eyes of the most 
supine to the prevailing corruptions which 
strike at the stability of all property, and all 
permanent institutions ! Nor are the joint- 
stock societies for spreading, what is called 
knowledge, but which is in fact poison, one 
atom less dangerous ! 

There is at present a stultification in the 
whole working of English affairs, which must 

* See the case of Buckingham versus Banks, last 
Term. 



tiy ADVERTISEMENT, 

be suicidal ! Of these, not the least have been 
the Foreign Loans ! Perhaps no Minister 
could have prevented them ! Yet I think that 
nothing w^ould have been more easy, than to 
put such obstacles in their way, as would 
have checked them almost to annihilation ! But 
I warn Ministry to beware how they run mad 
with what are called the enlightened principles 
of the modern philosophy of commerce and 
money ! It will be seen ere long that they 
are a little too eager and too rapid in some of 
their movements; and that Mr. Ricardo is not 
always quite so good a guide as they have taken 
him to be I* 

As to Aristocracy, I protest against being 
understood to defend it on any other principle 
than the general good of society. Where it 
can be proved to trench on that principle, let 
it be limited, or proscribed I I do freely admit 

^ I believe that in every case in -which he has differed 
from Jdam Smith he is wrong :*-^not that Adam Smith 
is ahvays right! 



ADVERTISEMENT. XV 

that its true principles are at present grossly 
outraged in England; and that the aristocracy 
of money is the worst in the world; and that 
rank and title hought with new wealth is quite 
intolerable ! — Perhaps, however, the aristocracy 
of false Genius is as bad; or even worse! But 
I recollect myself; — my advertisement to what 
is itself only an advertisement, is already too 
long I 

Paris, Sept. 20, 1825^ 



INDEX TO NAMES AND CHARACTERS. 



Akeicside, M. 71. 
Banks, Sir Joseph, 32. 
Barbauld, Mrs. 2, 13, 19, 20. 
Beattie, James, 12» 
Blackwood's Magazine, 6. 
Bloomfield, Robert, 31. 
Eoswell, Sir A. 32. 
, James, 32. 

' , James, jun. 32^ 

Bowles, Lisle, 40. 

Burleigh, Lord, 29* 

Byron, Lord, 31, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65 ^66, 67, 63, 

Carter, Elizabeth, 34. 

Chesterfield, Lord, 41. 

Churchill, Charles, 36. 

Colbourne, Ml. 68. 

Collins, William, 1% 56. 

Combe, William^ 17. 

Cumberland, Richard, 11» 

Darwin, Dr. 18. 

Davenant, C. 7, 

Debrett, J. 90. 

Doddington,Babb, 24, 



XViii INDEX TO NAMES. 

Edgeworth, Miss, 76. 

Egmont, Lord, 23, Ik. 

Genlis, Madam de, 75. 

Gibbon, Edward, 8. 

Gifford, W. 6. 

Glover, Richard, 58. 

Glyn, Dr. 57. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 71. 

Gray, T. 10, 19, 31,80. 

Grenvilles, 38. 

Grosvenor, Lord, 29. 

Harte, Walter, 42. 

Johnson, Dr. 8, 33. 

Junius, Letters of, 37. 

Langhorne, John, 56. 

Lawrence, French, 36. 

Blathias, J. T. 37. 

Mavrocordato, 71. 

Mitford, William, 5. 

Montagu, Mrs. 34- 

Murray, Mr. 68, 

Newcastle, William Cavendish, Duke of, 54.^ 

Oxford, Lord, 8, 9. 

Petrarch, F. 75. 

Piozzi, Mad. 86. 

Pitt, William, 43. 

Pope, Alexander, 19, 40. 

Ricardo, 7. 

Sackville, Lord, 37. 

Sade, Abbe de, 75. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 40.- 

Segur, Count, 86. 

Seward, Miss, 19.- 



INDEX TO x\AMES. XlX 



Shelley, Bysshe, 62. 
Shenstone, William, 
Smith, Adam, 7, 

, Charlotte, 40. 

Stanhope, P. D. 42. 
Thanet, Lord, 29. 
Warton, Joseph, 11. 

' , Thomas, 11. 

Wordsworth, William, 83, 
Young, Edward, 71,. 



BRIEF INDEX OF MATTER, 

AND LEADING TOPICS. 



Affected Poetry, 81. 

Age does not always bring improvement, 88. 

Aristocracy ruined by Pitt^ 43» — English, 90. 

Associations, unforced, 84. 

Author criticised^ 2. 

Authors in society, 16. 

temporary, 36, 77. — Qualities necessary, 7:^. 

Authorities historic, 75. 

Bentham, Jeremy, 64. 

Biography, Note-writer*s love of, 64. 

Birth, true value of^ 42, 46, 48. Pride in^ 72. 

Books, their success from party, 67, 

Bride of Abydos, 69. 

Cain, 72, ^ 

Calumnies, 65. 

Cavendish family, 55. 

Character, delineation of, 75. 

Charlemagne's blood, 90. 

Civil wars, 25. 

Claim of peerage, 27, 

Classes of peers, 51. 

Coarseness uf Lord Byron, 59. 72. 



INDEX OF MATTER. XXI 

Cold-hearted, 81. 

Coligny, 36, 69. 

Committee, Greek, 61, 64. 

Conformity to the worlds 76, 79^ 

Conversation, 55. 

Coppet, 36. 

Corruption, public, 88. 

Corsair, 69. 

Cries, false, against Lord Byron, 87, 

Criticism, literary^ I4. 

Difference of opinion, 66. 

Distinction, love of, 72. 

Economy, Political, 6^ 

Edinburgh Review, 7, 22. 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers^ 65, 

Enthusiasm, 75, 79. 

Estates, English, size of, 53, 

Factions and parties in literature, 67. 

Familiarity not equality, 86. 

Families, old, their supineness, 56, 

Feelings, sickly, 80. 

Ferney, 36. 

Fictions, technical, 76. 

Flights, wild, 81. 

Foreigners mistake English nobility, 25, 

French literature, 73. 

Genevan lake, 69. 

Genius said to be less rare than judgment, 55. 

~, bastard, 80. 

German quarters of descent, 45. 

Giaour, 69. 

Greece, Lord Byron in, 58. 

Greek Committee, 61, 64. 

Hsart, secrets of, pleasure w disclosing, 7G. 



SXU INDEX OF MATTER. 

Heaven and Eaith, 72. 
Hypocrisy, exposure of, 59. 
Identification^ 70. 
Imagination, 82. ^ , 

Inconsistencies, 65. 
Independent spirit, 80* 
Inheritable merit, 4^. 
Invention in poetry, 56, 71, 
Ionian islands, 65, 
Jessy, elegy by Shenstone, 71. 
Journals, literary, 4» 

, Foreign, 15. 

Juan, Don, character of, 59, 82, 

Judgment, sound, rare, 54. 

Jury, trial by, 87, 

Labourers, productive and unprodactive, 50. 

Last days of Lord Byron, 60, 61. 

Letters on Lord Byron, 72. 

Literary merit, 4. 

Literature, modern, 4, 

, duties of, 79. 

Lords^ Jurisdiction, 24. 
Manfred, 72. 

Manliness of Lord Byron, 31. 
Memoirs, suppressed, 2. 

by Lord Byron, coarse, 60* 

of Madame de Genlis^ 74- 

Mixtures in society, l\l , 
Monkeys, poetical, 80. 
Monthly Review, 15. 
Magazine, 6. 
Montmorencies, 91. 
Moore's life of Lord Byron, 73. 
Nevilles, 91, 



INDEX OF MATTER. XXIU 



Newspaper literature, 76. 

Night Thoughts, 71. 

Nobility, British, 25. 

Nobles, old, not a set^ 20. 

Opinions are of complex origin, 85- 

Oratory, parliamentary, 49. 

Parisina^ 69. 

Patriotism, when proved by acts, 58^ 

Peerage, augmentations of, 4^» 

number of, 51. 

French, 53. 

Peerages, modern, 23. 

, male, old, 26. 

, Tvhicii are old, 72^ 

Peers of King James, 23. 

of Lord North, 24. 

Percys^ 91. 

Philosophy, modern, 49. 

• , bastard, 77. 

Poetry, its character, 56« 
Power above law, 87. 
Practical man's opinions, 57. 
Prejudice, how far objectionable, 2^ 
Prejudices against Lord Byron, 61. 
Press^ licentious, 7. 

, its abuses, 67, 

Properties, new, fate of, 54. 
Puffs, 68. 

Puppets, temporary, of state, 39^ 
Quarterly Review^ 5. 
Quiet obscurity, 89. 
Report, good and evil, 84. 
Retirement, literary, 86. 
Reviews, influence of, 16, 



XXi^ INDEX OF MATTER. 

Reviews, dandy, SO. 
Revolution, French, 15. 
Rolliad, 96. 

Rousseau's insanity, 62, 75. 
Rowleian controversy, 36. 
Russell family, 55. 

Selfishness falsely ascribed to Lord Byron, €0. 
Sensibility, 79. 
Servility, 80. 
Services, literary, 88. 
Shakespeare, 70, 81. 
Slang, 59, 72. 
Society, unequal, 12= 
Sophistries of the age, 85. 
Stael, Madame de, 74. 
Stanhope, Colonel, 61. 
Statesmen, practical, 65. 
Success, literary, effect of, 68, 
Surface of foreign travel, 78. 
Talkers, 55. 

Topics for authors not exhausted, 77, 
Topsy-turvy of society, 89. 
Tory families, 22. 
Travels, books of, 78. 
Trite thoughts, 84. 
Unequal society, 80. 
" Westminster Review, 5. 
Whig families, 22. 
Wordsworth's poetry, 69, ^5. 



A NOTE 

ON THE SUPPRESSION 



OP 



MEMOIRS LATELY ANNOUNCED, 



Aug. 14, 1825. 

About two montLs ago, I announced the immediate 
appearance of a small volume^ entitled Fragments of 
Memoirs of my own Time^ as a slender portion of a 
laborious work then in progress. To prevent useless 
enquiry, I thus declare that this volume is withdrawn. 
The sheets were prepared, and a fortnight would have 
carried it through the press: at the moment that it 
was ready, a few words in a correspondence with Eng- 
land made me hesitate,—- and hesitation as to a project 
with me almost always ends in abandonment. 

I do not think that the reasons, which operated on 
me, ought to have deterred me ; — but the energy which 
is suffered to cool — and— still ^re, which is blighted, 
—with me — returns no more- 

The task was bold, and perhaps perilous ; — but I 
should not, as some persons feared, or pretended to 
fear, have trenched upon the limits of dehcacy. Of 
my living cotemporaries I should have spoken with 
candour, though not without discrimination: of the 
dead I should have spoken with the calmness, frankness, 
and impartiality of historical truth. 

It has been supposed, from the manner in which the 
announcement was worded, that I should have dealt 

B 



with a class of living characters, with which my taste 
and my habits give me no communication. With the 
gossip of the petty butterflies of fashion, and the ordi- 
nary societies and amusements of daily life, I have no 
intercourse; and therefore should be a very unskilful, 
as well as unwilling relator of them. It is of the 
national character — of the distinctions of society as they 
operate on the morals and essential actions and opi- 
jaions of life, that I should have attempted to enter 
into the delineations. 

My sybilline leaves, written with the energy of im- 
mediate impulse, are already scattered ;■ — if not lost : 
— and never now will they see the light. — Checked 
hope and energy turn to disgust ; — and I cannot bear 
even to cast my eyes upon them. I shall probably 
•write others in a returning humour; — but they will 
be very different. 

I do not mean to complain of criticism : there has 
been enough of it, of late, bestowed upon me in such 
a tone as to give me at least as much pleasure as pain : 
and I cannot feel that all the severe parts are just. 
But this little pamphlet will not allow space enough to 
permit me to enter into the discussion of them. 

I have, perhaps, peculiar notions as to the due pur- 
poses of literature: — at least peculiar, when compared 
with the fashion of thinking, which commenced with 
the present century, and is now almost universal — in 
England, My confidence in the principles I have adopt- 
ed arises from the sanction of the agreeing voice of the 
admitted sages of all f#mer times and countries. 

A specimen of one of the last of the old school has 
come again under my consideration within these few 
days in the collected /Fbr^5 of Mrs. Barbauld^ pub- 
lished by Miss Aikin, (her niece). Mrs. Barbauld was 
nearly on the completion of her 82d year — for she was 
born 20th June, 1743, and died 9th March, 1825. Her 
Poems were first published in 1773, at the age of 30; 
— so that she continued in the career of authorship for 
52 years : — not indeed like Mrs. Elizabeth Carter- 
some of whose excellent poems appeared in the Gentle- 



man's Magazine— I think in 1735, her IG^tli year — and 
^'ho lived in full possession of her faculties till Jan. 
4806, ^Yhen she had completed her 86th year — so that 
she survived her earliest publications for 71 years. 

With the poems of both these excellent women, and 
truly polished authors, I was conversant from child- 
hood ; — and such has been the uniformity of ray taste, 
that I think of them now, exactly as I thought at the 
age of fifteen. Their fame may have been slow ; and 
perhaps not extensive,— but it is cere per ennius 1 — Mrs. 
Barbauld's taste was congenial to Mrs. Carter's;— and 
it is clear to me that her poems were formed on the 
model of her predecessor. They have somethinj_ more 
of delicacy; but they are surely less vigorous. It is 
in song-writing only that she excels her. I know 
nothing in its kind, equal to her first song : 

" Come here* fond youth, -whoe'er thou be." 

Neither of these poets belong to the first or second 
class: because both were deficient in the higher powei's 
of imagination. By this I mean something very different 
from mere figurative language, and what petty critics 
call the flowers of poetrj. When the inexhaustible 
Author of W^averley embodies his pictures of old 
national manners in invented characters, engaged in a 
series of interesting incidents, he displays the best 
qualities of grand poetical invention. Frivolous inven- 
tion, exercised in the tricks of language, is worse than 
useless. Nothing is valuable but the thought ; — ^and 
that, when trae and forcible, wdU commonly bring pro- 
per language with it. 

I do not deny that the literature of the age which 
closed with the eighteenth century had sunk into too 
much taraeness. I speak of those who at the French 
Revolution had already closed, or were closing their 
career ; — not of the youthful tribe who soon afterwards, 
and before the year 1800, commenced it. — But tame* 
ness is better than false slrength-— than extravagance 
and distortion ! 

Genius and literature can only be estimated by coir - 



parison. How can they, wHo read no publications but 
those of the current day_, judge of the merits of the 
works which preceded them ? It is part of a system to 
hold forth, that the world is in a progressive state of 
perfectibility : and therefore, that the praise of what 
has been done by the former generations must be 
founded on prejudice^ and inveterate habit ! How 
often, when I appeal to old authorities against the pre- 
sent, am I surveyed with placid and ineffable contempt 
by the modern illuminati, who cry — " Ah I we do not 
blame you I — it is natural — and perhaps amiable —to 
stick by your early impressions.^ however incorrect V 
They assume in their blindness that the impressions 
are incorrect, with as much certainty as if they had 
' ' proof of holy writ !" — — 

The misfortune is that literature now acts by combina^ 
tions : individual strength or wisdom can do nothing. It 
is exactly as it is in the Iluuse of Commuus ; ihare the 
most extraordinarily qualified individual who ever had 
a seat within the walls of St. Stephen's chapel would 
be a cypher in point of power, if he acted not in con- 
junction with an organised party. He could carry no 
measure ; could secure no attendance ; nor could 
engage a single listening ear to that, to which no party 
discipline ordered its adherents to attend. 

The press is now exactly in the same state. Every 
literary journal is carried on to forward the purposes 
of a party : nothing is judged by its intrinsic and in- 
dividual character : and no book is bought or read, 
except as fashion, or intrigue, or faction dictates. Critics 
suppress, distort, or disguise their opinions, to secure 
the favoiu* of their employers, till they lose all dis- 
crimination; and cease to have opinions. Publishers 
always protest that they are under contract not to inter- 
fere with the judgments of the editors of their journals. 
Who can believe them ? It may be true in the letter i 
it cannot be virtually true! An editor must surely 
know that he would soon meet the " cold blank looks'" 
of his employer, if he spoke slightly of a work, in which 
that employer had embarked a large sum ! In twenty 



years I can hardly recollect an impartial article of criti- 
cisin in any of the popular journals. 

I know not why I should not descend from generals 
to a few particulars, though I must admit that I shall 
begin with what is partly conjectural. 

I take up Mr. Mitford^ the historian of Greece— ^a 
veteran, noAV, I believe, in his 81st or 82d year. 

It is impossible that men of taste can have but one 
opinion of his language : it is full of all sorts of faults : 
— inelegant —crude — harsh — unvernacular — affected— 
and pedantic. 

All his admitted industry and learning — in paths now 
almost cultivated by himself alone — coidd not for many 
years overcome these mighty obstacles to the perusal 
of bis useful works. The critics, who wanted a subject 
to play with, were sufficiently pungent upon him : — and 
they, whose adulatory politics, servile minds, and re- 
gard to men of a certain station in society, instilled 
into them every inclination to be favourable to him— 
could not refrain from betraying their disgust at least 
to his style! — 

But lo ! a sudden change has within a short period 
taken place in a leading review. Mr. Mitford has 
been held up, as an oracle, and a model of composition, 
as well as of great learning, and sound thought ! 

If the last number of the Westminster Review may 
be believed — the secret is now out: — IVIr. Mitford is 
himself the principal critic in the Quarterly Review on 
subjects of Grecian History, and the topics connected 
/with it. Certainly it is a little strange, that they, who 
write in such a phraseology as that in which Mr. Mit- 
ford has always written, should be among those who sit 
in judgment on the polite literature of the age ! I do 
not guess, that any one will set up Mr. Mitford for a 
man of genius : I assume that he is learned. I once 
knew him a little : — he had nothing in his conversation 
which betrayed talent. He was then colonel of a regi- 
ment of militia. Thirty eventful years have passed since 
that slight intercourse. He must forgive me for speaking 
thus freely of him : I never experienced his friendship : 



6 

I know not, that I owe any thing to his enmity. He 
was an intimate in my brothers house. Of those con- 
nected with him, I forbear to speak:— they are topics 
of grave history, and weighty constitutional principle. 

There has appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for 
Juljr^ 1825, (in which there is unproportionally more 
polite literature than in any other magazine"^) a character 
of the late Editor of the Quarterly Review, as a critic. 
My own opinion I reserve, through delicacy, to a future 
opportunity : I have long formed one— partly founded 
on personal observation and experience— which is ex- 
ceedingly decided. And I have drawn up from long 
and mature examination a statement, endeavouring to 
shew wherein the difference between this review and 
the Edinburgh — independent of politics — seems to lie ! 
~The difference is very essential — so far as regards 
both literature and personalities. — In politics, my 
opinions have hitherto approached nearer those of the 
Quarterly; but I cannot approve the manner in 
which it treats them; — the system of selection it has 
adopted ; — nor the diplomatic sort of management 
and finesse, with which the whole publication has 
always been conducted. I must say that the warfare of 
the Edinburgh is more fiank, open, and simple ; — and 
that it behaves TNith more siraight-forwardness to its 
own party. 

In point of mere erudition, I suppose there is no 
one who will deny that the present age has greatly de- 
graded. It is pretended, that it has improved in philo- 
sopliy and reason. I can perceive no colour for this 
pretension. Even in political economy^ which is sup- 
posed to be almost a new science—- and which is per- 
haps newer than any other — the advances are not such 
as are assumed. Whoever reads the works of Charles 
Davenant^ now more than 130 yeai^s old, will be con- 

* I shall be accused of partiality in praising the Old 
Monthly Magazine^ but most unquestionably it has pro- 
duced several very able and well-written articles in its late 
numbers. 



viuced of this. Most of the new variations from the 
doctrines of Adam Sjiiith are in fact but variations from 
right to wrong. I cannot subscribe to the superiority 
o)l Ricardo, He is a greater favourite than Malthus^ 
because his doctrines favour the interest of the money- 
getters, and money-changers, who now rule not merely 
the Stock-Exchange, and the London marts— but the 
people, and even the Government! 

The uses and abuses of the press have been discussed 
so often, that nothing new can be said upon the sub- 
ject : and it is vain to speak the truth in the present 
state of public opinion, and public interests ; because 
it is too unpalatable to be received ; for the public will 
now receive nothing which does not flatter its pre- 
conceived notions or passions. It reads only to be 
confirmed in its errors;— 'not to be taught. It is 
assumed that the press is the vehicle of reason : — and 
that reason must make its way. I cannot refrain from 
asserting that this is a strange misconception of the 
imperfect character of the human intellect, such as it is 
among the generaHty of mankind, who have not leisure 
to give up their whole time to intellectual pursuits. 
Even men of great learning are often deficient in sound 
reason and judgment ! 

The misfortune of the Edinburgh Review is, that 
almost all its articles are pleadings : they are, for the 
most part, very ably done; — but they take only one 
side of a question. They are ex parte arguments. 
Sometimes they are written with extraordinary facihty 
and clearness : but they will not often bear a second 
reading; they want compression, and novelty of matter. 
In fact, they have a great deal of the same sort of merit 
as Pitt's speeches possessed. — The Scotch have a sort 
of philosophical manner of saying the most common- 
place things, which imposes on the generality of 
readers. 

Among the ablest and most admired articles are 
those on Poetical works : but in analysing them, I have 
always found that much of the charm was fled : like 



8 

tlie flake of snow falling on the river, so beautifully 
expressed in Tarn GShanter^ 

— «• A moment seen, then melts for ever." 

There is more sterling matter in one of the better 

Eages of Johnson s Lives, in his Cowley — his Milton--^ 
is Dry den — his Pope — than in all these thin-spun, 
though eloquent, sheets or volumes, put together. — 
Some of the latter articles are especially washy, such 
as that on Campbell's unlucky Theodoric I In that 
article there is not even ease : — -all is strained ; and all 
baiTen labour. The reason is obvious : the writer was 
criticising in a contrary direction to his opinion. 

The opinion formed of a book, when it is first pub* 
lished, is very seldom the opinion entertained of it 
after a lapse of twenty or thirty years. I remember 
when Gibbon s Autobiography was first published, by 
Lord ShejQSeld, about 1796, it was generally considered 
to be a failure^ whatever the reviews might say (for I 
forget what they said). I thought otherwise: I con- 
sidered it a curious, instructive, and important piece 
of biography. I saw its defects : they were the defects 
of the man, not of the work : — it was too cold, arti- 
ficial, affected, and monotonous ; it wanted eloquence, 
depth of feeling, and imagination. But its serenity 
and good humour ; its pure and steady love of litera- 
ture ; its erudition ; its research ; and its extent of 
views, were all delightful. What is the present value 
of it ? Is it not generally held in high respect and 
esteem? Is it not cited by the best authors among 
standard authorities ? 

I have often been struck with the fate which followed 
Horace Walpole, Lord Orford, to his grave ! He had 
been, perhaps, the most fashionable author of his day. 
The public curiosity was keenly alive to all he wrote : 
he had rather an unreasonable sway over the pubhc 
mind : his wit, and bon-mots were deemed irresis- 
tible ; — and a spark of his ridicule directed at a cotem- 
porary, was sure to degrade him ; while his com- 



9 

mendation was often alone sufiicleut to lift a work into 
fame. I remember two striking instances of this ; but 
I forbear to point them out, as one of the authors is 
still living, and would by no means admit such an 
origin to the celebrity of his earliest work. I do not 
insinuate that this influence enjoyed by Lord O. was 
unmerited. He was a man not merely of a very quick 
and acute taste, and very extensive and curious 
literature; — but I feel an unalterable conviction that 
he was a man of very decided genius : — genius rather 
sparkling, than profound— but still positive genius, — 
witness the inventive powers of his Castle of Otranto. 
I conversed with him in his old age — two years before 
he died — an octogenarian; — and his conversation was 
exactly like his writings. Death commonly consecrates 
a popular author ; and they who have been partially 
praised in their lives, have flowers lavished in super- 
abundance on the insensible grave ! It was otherwise 
with Lord O. His opinions, his authority, and hisf 
genius became all at once bye-words of contempt with 
those who followed him in literary sway. I am not 
in the secret : I know not whence this arose ; but 
unquestionably it arose from some personal or political 
faction. 

It has at length died away ; and now the literary 
public seem once more willing to assign to this ac- 
complished and ingenious man his true place. His 
Catalogue of Royal and JSoble Authors is full of inge- 
nuity and amusement, though it is not profound. But 
take it as a Catalogue ; and where will its like be 
met? The Anecdotes of Painting are as entertaining 
as a romance; and as beautiful as taste can make them. 
And in what Letters will so many lively and interest- 
ing minutiae of history and anecdote be found, as in 
those of this author ? 

It would be easy to point out defects in his cha- 
racter ;— and littlenesses which put him below the 
objects of pure admiration. He wanted both grandeur 
of thought, and moral pathos. He was vain and 
j5 elfish ; had many objects of petty ambition \ and, 

B2 



10 

however liberal he affected to be in his political 
opinions, had some of the silly airs of a false aris- 
tocracy,— from which I believe his bluff, coarse, and 
strong-minded father was entirely free. 

I have strong reasons for concluding that Gray 
thought Walpole had no heart ! and he never wauld 
place confidence in him, after their first quarrel, 
though the wound was outwardly healed. Gray died 
of the gout, partly hereditary, and partly brought on 
by the spleen of early family misfortunes, and of a 
lonely, neglected, mortified life. He lived in the dull 
apartments of a small college, amid petty cabals and 
tasteless mathemalicians, little cherished, and little 
noticed. His autumnal tours infused a little temporary 
life into him : but college habits, morbid native delicacy, 
and native shyness, each of them strengthened by his 
solitary studies, crossed those tours with many occa- 
sional disgusts. He was both timid and fastidious, 
even to disease. His heart was benevolent, moral, and 
virtuous ; and his feelings exquisite, profound, and 
sublime. Added to his classical and splendid genius, 
he was a man of powerful reason, strong sense, deep 
sagacity, and accurate knowledge of mankind. His 
scholarship was perfect, because, while it was pre- 
eminently minute and exact, it was inspired by the 
very highest degree of poetical taste. It was not so 
laborious, so abstruse, and quite so abundant as 
Milton's; but it was more refined and exact. Milton's 
latin poetry was good ; but Gray's was inimitable. 
Milton neither has written, nor could have written 
such an ode as Gray's Alcaic on the Grande Chartreuse, 
I can find nothing in all the eleven interesting volumes 
of iheFoemata Italorum'^ at all equal to that ode. 

* Printed at Florence, 1719 — now a very scarce work, 
even in Italy. I could find but one copy at Florence 1820, 
1821. Molini had it not, and it had seldom passed through 
his hands. I met with a copy Intonsus, after eighteen 
months' search. Not one could I find at Rome and ISaples ; 
yet Rome is a copious mart for good books, at moderate 
prices. 



11 

Tom Warton was a very rich and elegant scholar : 
but he had not the very fine tact of Gray. He wanted 
both Gray's depth and penetration, and his fiery en- 
thusiasm ; and still more, he wanted Gray's unfailing 
force of moral pathos, and sublime conscience. But 
he was an amialile and enviable man : to his tranquil 
temper and easy habits a college life was all enjoyment : 
he had a love of society, — perhaps somewhat below 
him : coarseness did not offend his smiling humour ; 
and his humour made him please and be pleased. The 
Oxonians loved Tom Warton, though the pompous and 
empty dignitary sometimes looked down with stupid 
scorn on the careless and unassuming poet. His rural 
descriptions and his Gothic imagery will secure lasting 
fame to his poetry. And as to the History of his be- 
loved art, it is one of the most instructive books of our 
language. How barren and tasteless is every other work 
^ on that domestic subject compared with his ! 

I do not think quite so well of his brother s Essay 
on Pope ;— it is superficial ; and wants originality : but 
still it is amusing and elegant; and such qs no scholar 
of the present day could produce. 

It was the fashion to give the palm to this elder 
brother : — it was his superficiality and lightness which 
made him more popular, than the weighty and more 
curious pages of one who joined the original and ex- 
tensive researches of an historian and antiquary to the 
charms of an elegant, just, and beautiful writer. To 
such pages, so loaded, a reader must bring apprehensive- 
ness, attention, and knowledge. I remember when 
the flimsy, coxcombical pages of Cumberland were 
far more popular than those of Tom Warton ! Perhaps 
they are so still ! 

Gumberland's life^ though much admired, was a 
most insipid and misleading piece of biography. He 
was quick, and of a most fertile memory : his talents 
were a thin soil that threw up a rapid, but slight and 
tasteless vegetation : yet not without the aid of bor- 
rowed seed, and much ai^tificial manure. His vanity 
was to connect himself with the loftier aristocracy ; 



12 

and to assume the airs of a high-born and high-bred 
gentleman.. A man may be equal to the highest in 
birth, talents, accomplishments, and manners : yet if 
lie does not equal them in titles and wealth, he is a 
fool and a servile^ to live much among them. His 
pride is best preserved by his own surly and defensive 
mdependence. 

** Not therefore humble he who seeks retreat I 

Pride guides his steps ; and bids him shun the great 1" 

The highest-born man in Europe, if untitled, cannot 
be protected from the slights of the stupid ^nd base 
in the presence of a new Duke, whose ancestors an 
hundred years ago had scarcely quitted the plough of 
the little parish, where to be born and die was all the 
history they afforded for five centuries ! But if a 
lawyer of yesterday, bred in a clerk's office, gets by 
the most odious and time-serving corruptions, a coro- ^ 
net on his carriage, he thinks himself changed into 
imperial essence, and will not allow that he breathes 
common air with those who are not admitted to the 
peerage I The very laws which bind others, are, it 
seems, nothing to them : statutes are to give way :• — 
the landmarks of the Constitution are to be laid pros- 
trate : — all in respect to the etherial essence of the 
new-gained coronet ! To be sure, the doctrine is quite 
new : never in the most aristocratical, or most tory 
times, was it ventured to be uttered before ! * 

Beattie was a good man ; and had a few notes of 
fine poetry : but they were soon exhausted ; and his 
invention was very barren. He had not a great mind : 
he was, in- truth, something of a sen^ile I his scholar- 
ship was far from being of an high order : he wanted 
energy and originality ; and I think that, as a prose- 
writer, he too generally approached to dulness. His 

* This is no exaggeration. Such doctrines, to the full 
extent, were lately uttered in the Lords I Yet the pre- 
tended lovers of the constitution, the alj-watcbful Liberals^ 
passed it over withoul notice* 



13 

Letters are amusing and amiable ; but lliey are feeble, 
and sometimes ahnost affected : he felt himself uneasy 
in polite society ; and was always on the stretch. 
His domestic misfortunes had broken his spirits and 
destroyed the energy of his genius. His criticisms are 
worth but little : they are laboured ; yet not happy, or 
just, or new. 

We cannot recur to criticism a second time, unless 
it be frank and sincere. A few bold, spirited, 
natural touches are worth volumes of high-wrought 
plausibilities ! — Mrs. Barhauld's Letters are dull— very 
dull : — but some momentary burst of animosity, poli- 
tical, religious, or literary, roused her from her usual 
state of candid tranquillity ; and with what a severe 
and powerful discrimination has she drawn the 
character of Joh>^son \ "*' It is ingenious ; and the 
strokes electrify, because they are aimed in good 
earnest I Yet, after all — with all these faults — admit- 
ting them to their full extent, he will remain a giant in 
our literature, — and even among our moral characters ! 
Genius need not dread the touch of the spear of truth 
and talent : — it is the false and poisonous arrow, forged 
by malice, corruption and artifice, that embitters and 
harms, though it cannot destroy ! What have all the 
envenomed and furious attacks which party hatred 
directed against Buhke done to cloud his resistless 
splendour ? 

The effect of the French Revolution was almost as 
violent upon literature, as upon Governments. Some- 
thing of the same machinery and devices was adopted : 
one of the first objects was to get possession of the press 
in all its branches : the scheme was carried into almost 
every department of Letters : — and especially poetry, 
ethics, history, biography, and travels. No one was 
allowed to enjoy any literary fame, who was not of the 
liberal party : and very many were forced into notice, 
solely on that gi'ound. This was the real source of the 
violent and extravagant changes which took place in 

* See it answered postea^ 



14 

the character of English poetry at that time : and wa^ 
the true secret of the fame of several poets, who are 
still popular. The politics of most of those, whose 
works are now most in demand, are too well known, to 
require to be particularized. I am aware of the Great 
Instance, which will be brought against me, but there 
is nothing, which has not its exceptions — and it 
would be easy in this case to account for the exception I 
It will be urged, that there were always critical 
journals on both sides. But defence is not so easy as 
attack ; and a counter-scheme is never so vigorous as 
that which gave birth to it. There have been various 
other minor causes of comparative inefficiency on this 
side. There was an Invperium, in imperio : a division 
of power and meddling : a partial influence of the 
Admiralty and Treasujy-'^SLnd the sinister influence 
of certain coteries.^ aristocratical, literary and com- 
mercial. The Liberals went upon a broader, grander, 
and more generous scale. The Aristocrats gave way 
to private passions and prejudices : they sacrificed some 
of their friends to secret cabal ; they " damned with 
faint praise," and mortified, insulted, and silenced by 
insidious and untenable defences. As far as literature 
was concerned, its own taste and feeling emanated from 
a very minor sort of school. I do not speak this of 
the ostensible editor ; but of many, v?ho were behind 
the curtain—- very pretty writers of domestic verses ; 
or young men puffed up with the fame of having written 
good school and college exercises. Occasional articles, 
powerfully written, would of course be drawn from 
aid so far sought, and so widely connected. But 
scarcely a Number has ever appeared, in which some 
secret and treacherous personalities are not discover- 
able by a keen and intelligent eye. 

The two sides are very often both wrong in the 
discussion of a subject : but it does not follow that 
the reader will be wise enough to find out the truth 
which lies between them ! This system has embittered 
literature; has encouraged the mob in its insolence to 
intellectual pursuits ; has confirmed the professional 



15 

and commercial classes in llieir own ofFensive self- 
sufliciency ; and has nipped the sensitive genius of many 
a beautiful spirit in the bud ! 

A previous attempt had been made on the part of 
governments and ancient institutions, in the British 
Critic : but as it was supposed to be mainly ecclesias- 
tical, and under the influence of the established church, 
its power was not very extensive : and it wanted more 
of the vigour and freedom of character which the tone 
of the times called for. One of the editors is still 
living: a learned and ingenious Archdeacon -.—anothe] 
well known in his day, who lei- ^v.-!imd him for pub- 
lication, strange posthumous memoirs — full of idle and 
inaccm-ate tattle — w^as in no degree qualified to be a 
sound and deep judge of literature. But this work 
had some able contributions, and a few beautiful 
articles.— .It was at any rate a Rei^ietv of Books — 
not a set of political, and legal, and commercial dis- 
sertations ! 

The Monthly Review^ always characterized by 
presbyterian dulness, is now duller than ever. It has 
passed into the hands of other proprietors ; and it is 
time that it should improve ! 

The old journals of France and Leipsic of the 17th 
century, were more fairly done : certainly with more 
learning, and, it appears to me, with more sound 
ability. They were not so piquant -.but epigrammatic 
point is not the best merit of composition, nor the 
greatest proof of genius. The misfortune of the present 
day is, that the public taste dictates instead of being 
directed ; and that, as literature is become a mer- 
cenary profession, authors write only for sale and lucre. 
He, who writes for money, can seldom write what he 
thinks. People buy books, not to learn, — ^but to be 
flattered : — they reject whatever contradicts their own 
notions.* Nothing would astonish more than a dis- 

* All this has been ably dwelt upon in the early Numbers 
of the Westminster Review : a Journal in which it would 
not have been expected to be found. 



16 

closure of the seCTets of the concoction of a sifiglr 
Number of a popular Review. The man in the mask, 
whose supercilious judgment, while thus concealed, is 
so terrible, would instantly lose all the influence of his 
decision. 

An author has no chance against a popular Review, 
because it is mechanically dispersed every where, and 
read by every one, — read, as newspapers are read, — 
to qualify a man to join in the conversation of society : 
its circulation is multiplied at least thirty-fold beyond 
the average sale of separate publications ; — and a single 
copy on the table of a large reading-room affords pe- 
rusal to hundreds. It is^ moreover, addressed to 
popular prejudices ; and takes advantage of all the 
favourite principles of thinking in daily life. This is 
the direct reverse of the spirit in which literature con* 
ducted itself, till about thirty-five years ago. The 
change will be admitted ; but it will be said^ that it 
is a change for the better! — There rests the question I 
It requires some boldness to deny it, in defiance of 
popular clamour. Ecclesiasticus says, that '^ wisdom 
Cometh of much leisure^'' etc. — but this will not be 
held authority. 

They, who have passed much of their lives among 
literary men in London, have a great technical advan- 
tage in the production of works which find a sale, or 
acquire notice ; — but little, I suspect, which gives their 
performances a permanent value. Genius alone can 
give long life ; even deep learning may be distilled, 
till the original is left in the state of a caput mortuum^ 
or rather corpus mortuum. 

Great poets have often spent their days alone, 
remote from the Capital, and from the society of 
authors — witness, Gray-> Cowper^ Bums :-- a.nd Milton 
seems to have mixed scarce at all with cotemporary 
wits. 

I remember one of the most singular characters of 
his age, who died about two years ago, having passed 
his 80th year. I mean JVilliam Combe ^ whose sati- 
rical poems. The Diaboliad, The First of Jprily etc. 



17 

attracted universal notice, about tlie year 1778. Tliey 
were productions of personal and fashionable attack ; 
and, as far as I can recollect, (for at least forty years 
have elapsed since I have seen them), they were 
written with great vigour. The history of this poet's 
life would furnish a series of the most extraordinary 
and romantic incidents ; — many of which have been 
related to me on the best authority ; — but which yet, 
(so very singular as they are) I cannot venture to 
relate on the mere force of a very treacherous 
memory. 

I am assured that Combe left ample MS. memoirs, 
which were intended to be consigned after his death to 
a literary friend, who could have done him ample 
Justice; but which were missing after his decease, 
and are not yet forthcoming. The anonymous works 
he wrote for the booksellers, would form a stupendous 
and incredible list, if completed. Latterly his powers 
were somewhat flattened by age. At this crisis he 
wrote Z?/\ Syntax's Tour^ of which he gave me a copy. 
He was the author of the letters of Thomas^ second 
LordLyttelton^ which were so long believed to be genu?- 
ine, and which excited such strong and general interest 
for several years. I am told that his average gains by au- 
thorship were about 800Z. a year. He inherited about 
dOjOOOZ. from an uncle, in the city, which enabled 
him to live splendidly in the circles of high fashion, 
for about two years — perhaps about the year 1772, or 
4773— when he entirely disappeared— till at length he 
was discovered in the ranks of a regiment of the line 
in an inn^ at Derby, by George Steevens, an old crony, 
to whom he long denied himself ; but who persevered 
in rescuing him from his degraded situation. He. then 
came to London, and made authorship a profession. 
A quarrel w4th the late Lord Hertford was the cause 
of his principal satires— his heroine was an old Coun^ 
tess Dowager of Home, I remember distinctly the great 
impression these satires made, when I was a boy ; and 
how many of the severest passages were on every one s 
lips. He h^d been educated^ I think, at Eton ; and 



18 

the two years he spent in fashionable society, enabled 
him to penetrate and be familiar with the interior of 
high life. He had extraordinary rapidity of apprehen- 
sion, and acuteness of \mderstanding. His adversity 
had still sharpened his wit ; and he had seen man- 
kind in situations where their heartlessness could be 
tried and brought to view. He had lived long enough 
out of the world — at least of the highest ranks— to 
have some coarseness of accent, "v^hen I conversed 
with him — but he had two delightful attractions : — he 
was manly and unaffected. He was then perhaps 
77 ;- — but he did not look more than 65. He was of 
a middle size— muscular — and of a countenance rather 
rough and heavy, — than elegant, brilliant, or intel- 
lectual. His poetry belonged to the inferior class : for 
satire is surely of a very secondary order : — but it was 
vigorous, manly, and full of point and knowledge of 
character. The slyle was good, and the versification 
flowing. He had belonged to a generation which wa3 
gone by ; and was little known to modern authors. 

When, about the year 1789 or 1790, Dr. Darwin, 
at an advanced age, brought out a portion of his 
Botanic Garden^ every one was dazzled, and continued 
dazzled for a year or two, with the splendour of its 
mechanism, for the verses were really no more than 
splendid mechanism. Pie had been a giant in a little 
society of literati at Lichfield and Derby, to which Miss 
Seward belonged : and this lady commenced her pub- 
lic career in poetry many years before him ; and I 
cannot doubt that she had had the aid of his correc- 
tions and improvements. At length, one of them 
certainly purloined long passages from the other. Amid 
conflicting testimony I will not pronounce which was 
the pilferer. Most assuredly a long passage appeared 
in the Botanic Garden^ which had been printed many 
years before ; and to which Miss Seward had subscribed 
her name. If the lines were really Darwiiis^ and sent 
forth in another name, by permission — it was mean 
and dishonourable to resume them ; yet this is what I 
suspect to have been the truth of the case. 



19 

Miss Seward's compositions were ruined by aflecta- 
tion, turgid attempts, and a corrupt, taAvdry taste. 
There are very powerful and splendid patches in her 
poems. Her vanity often stultified her; and she had 
strong passion ; but little genuine, tender, and just feel- 
ing. Her imagery was sometimes vivid and picturesque, 
for her fancy was powerful; but I think she had but 
little true poetical imagination. She had her short 
day ; and was a favourite at a crisis of barrenness, from 
about 1779 to 1783 : the public then grew satiated with 
her false brilliance, and she recovered no more. The 
simplicity and unpretending richness of Gowper put an 
end to all laboured and swelling descriptions. 

When I first began to read poetry, the school of 
Pope was not entirely extinct ; though he had been 
dead thirty years. The generation before me had been 
brought up in admiration of him ; and they could not in 
old age learn new lessons. Joseph Warton was consi- 
dered by them as a dangerous preacher of unorthodox 
dogmas ; a rebel to good sense and sound composition ; 
and a favourer of wild whims and gothic extravagance ! 
GnAY and CoLiixs were yet too modern to be considered 
by them as settled British classics; — and gravely and 
deeply to admire them was deemed the mere unripened 
taste of boyish presumption. I have lived long enough 
to find the names of Gray and Collins held as sacred as 
the name of Pope was then held ! * 

It is curious to read with what hatred and contempt 
cotemporary authors often speak of each other: and 
then in a few years to see them placed side by side on 
a shelf, as standard writers, whose merits none can dis- 
pute ! Johnson and Gray had a mutual dislike and ill 
opinion of each other : and how fierce and rude was 
the contest between Warburton and Lowth ! yet how 
venerated in literature are now the names of both ! 

In recurring to the new publication of Mrs. Bar» 
bcculd's Works^ I find an admirable Essay on Preju-' 
dice^ formerly printed in the Monthly Magazine, but 
which I now peruse for the first time. It is clearly, 



20 

concisely, beautifully^ and vigorously written; and is 
quite unanswerable. It is more especially wise and 
virtuous considering the school in which the authoress 
was educated, and passed her life. I am reluctant to 
enter on this ground, because the present brochure will 
not allow room to deal with it. But I will indulge in 
a few desultory remarks. 

This subject connects itself with the whole character 
of modern literature, and the prevailing colours of public 
opinion. It is the hinge on which the whole mechanism 
of the matter conveyed by the press now turns. The 
whole battle is directed against what is called Preju" 
dice. It is true that a distorted and partial meaning is 
given to that word : — it is understood only in a bad 
sense : — but it is the bad name which is to do the mis- 
chief. The sophistry and trick consists in the assump- 
tion, that a prejudice is necessarily wrong. 

A prejudice is not necessarily, of itself, either wrong 
or right. It may be one or the other. The proof there- 
fore that it is a prejudice is not a just ground of con- 
demnation. Before it be condemned, it ought to be 
demons^trated to be wrong : now the chances are not a 
little in favour of prejudices being jight ! If they are 
wrong, there is no doubt that they ought to be dis- 
carded. 

Prejudices are conclusions adopted on the authority 
of others before reason can operate, or without the ex- 
ercise of reason, or contrary to reason. Now, the opi- 
nion which has been adopted on the united talent and 
experience of successive ages has surely the best chance 
of being correct. 

The answer commonly urged is, that this goes to 
apply to a new age that which was only proper to the 
circumstances of ages gone by. I consider this answer 
to be not more satisfactory than that of the ignorant 
old farmer, who, failing in his crops from unskilful ma- 
nagement, replies to an adviser, who points out to him 
the success of his neighbour's field on the other side of 
the hedge, growing out of a different mode of culti- 
vation, — ''Ah! that may do very well for neighbour 



21 

Young; but 'uvont do in my land!" as if the laws of 
vegetation were not the same in lands of the same na- 
tive quality ! 

The character of human nature does not differ : 
times and circumstances do not differ in essentials : 
moral and political truth is the same in all ages. I do 
not say that no changes and ameliorations are requisite : 
I do not say that no abuses grow up, and ought to be 
corrected. I do not say that power is always right ; 
or that it does not require jealous and extreme watch- 
fiilness. 

I believe, for instance, that in the laws of England there 
still exist numerous provisions which were only fitted 
to the circumstances of tlie times, and which ought to 
be abolished. The prejudice in favour of these should 
be abandoned;, — not because it is a prejudice, — ^but be^ 
cause it is an irrational and had prejudice. But pre- 
sumptions ought always to be taken in favour of what 
has been long established;— and latent reasons, even 
against appearances, to be supposed, till the contrary is 
clearly proved. This contrary may in many cases be 
proved ; but it requires profound, long-exercised, pa« 
tient, and honest talent. 

I hate bigotry as much as any man ; and scorn mere 
authority, without the shew of reason upon due exami'- 
nation. But the rage for novelty is not only dangerous 
but detestable. To call every opinion derived from past 
times, or from others of more experifeice, higher abi- 
lity, or maturer age, a prejudice*— meaning, 2i false 
prejudice,— is either contemptible folly and ignorance, 
or unprincipled design and artifice ! 

I will not now enter on the discussion of the com- 
ments, which it is the prevailing fashion to make on the 
histories which develop the acts and characters of past 
ages. To think that there was any merit, or wisdom, or 
true liberty in them, comes under the denunciation of 
a prejudice I 

Thus it is with literature. The journals are to follovv 
the popular judgment, — because to impose the weight 
^f high opinion on them would be to operate h-^ prejur 



22 

dicell-^Yet it is impossible tliat they, who are not at 
leisure to pursue general truths, — who are tied down 
to the trammels of particular professions or occupa- 
tions, should be able, by the operations of their own 
minds, to form correct judgments on the great topics of 
intellect! — As far as our own judgment goes, we can 
only decide from the position in which we are placed : 
and that position very often necessarily commands only 
a partial and imperfect view."^ Forty years ago the po- 
pular reader had no better taste than he has now ; — but 
he then took the authority of more cultivated and more 
happily-gifted minds. 

The Edinburgh Review is at present supposed to ad- 
vocate the politics of the party called The ff^higs .—but 
it exhibits many occasional anomalies. Mr. Brougham, 
whose hand I think I often trace in it, is any thing rather 
than a Whig !— The Whigs have been an useful party 
in the state ; but they have a good deal changed their 
position. It appears to me, that they have not, of late, 
played their game with entire discretion. They have 
not taken the right points of Opposition ; and they have 
made themselves accompUces in those from which they 
should have slirunk. They have great families among 
them ; but I think that the great families have want- 
ed energy, talent, or sagacity. Many highly uncon- 
stitutional measures have been suffered to pass to- 
tally unopposed by tJiem I They set themselves against 
the Grown ; — but^I cannot say that they often enough 
set themselves in favour of the true liberties of the 
people ! They happen to consist of persons whose own 
habits are the most aristocratical of any in the nation : 
—they have the largest estates; — and are for the most 
part among the older of the present nobility, which are 
now almost a new race. 

As to old Tory families of nobihty, scarce any re- 
main. The Beauforts, Kutlands, and Clintons may be 
considered among the old; — and they are certainly 
Tories. We have a Tory lord who publicly states that 

* This is admirably illustrated by Mrs. Barbauld, 



23 

a Peer is of so Ligh a condition that he is privileged out 
of the laws that bind others : — but he is certairxly not 
an old peer, though he is an old man ! I can almost 
remember him in a somewhat humble station of life, 
which I doubt if he had not very lately quitted when I 
first was entered at Cambridge. And all this rise he 
has effected without talent or education ! He is a man 
of the most supreme dulaess whom 1 ever encoun- 
tered. 

There are families which cannot be said to have had 
any fixed /?oZ/^/c«Z principles ; their principles have been 
those of contrivance and private intrigue, to acquire 
place, rank, and family aggrandizement. It would be 
offensive to name them, though their origin and historj 
begin to be a good deal forgotten, and the believing 
public begin to consider them old and illustrious. Fa- 
milies of this cast are almost always haughty, reserved, 
and self-sufficient ; believing in their own exclusive 
dignity, and persuading themselves that they belong to 
a different cast. 

When King James I. came to the throne, he created 
a few peers, to whom half promises had been made by 
Queen Elizabeth. From that time he paid no regard 
to the old historic families ; — r- and many obscure, se- 
condary, or doubtful families were elevated to the 
Upper House — probably because they could command 
ready money, and paid large douceurs to the monarch's 
needy and corrupt favourites. Some of them have, at 
different periods, made some figure in our annals since 
that time : such as the Nottinghams, the Yillierses, the 
Cavendishes, the witty Lord Chesterfield, etc. 

The Civil Wars, the Restoration, the Revolution, the 
accession of Queen Anne, the memorable year 1711, 
and the accession of the House of Hanover, all opened 
new doors to the peerage. At the accession of the late 
king the ministry were rather sparing and select in their 
dispensation of peerages. Then came in the Grosvenors 
and Yernons by force of property and of ancient proving 
cial (not historical) origin — and^ Lord Egmont, a man 
of indefatigable intrigue, great vanity, great ambition^ 



24 

and some talent, after having struggled vainly all his life 
for the boon, obtained his object. The famous Bubb 
Dodington^ another political adventurer — of great 
wealth,— said to have been son of an apothecary in a 
provincial tow^n in th« West— did the same. He was 
a most profligate and shameless public character, yet a 
great self-deceiver : a man of strong ability and great 
acquirement; — but not a genius : a man of literature, 
and familiar with all the noble sentiments of classical 
literature: — yet a mean and id^Yixim^ servile, with the 
wealth to be independent, great, and the master of 
those around him ! What a paltry prize to sacrifice a 
long life for! — and to enjoy it, after all, not more, I 
think, than a few months and a year; — when death 
came, and displaced the pitiful coronet from his head to 
his coffin ! 

Lord North did not make many peers; — and some of 
those whom he made were very sorry ones ! Then came 
Mr. Pitt, who inundated the Lords' House ! and by such 
measures totally changed the character of the constitu- 
tion ! The great landed independent country-gentleman 
has now almost ceased to exist. All are uneasy ; all 
are looking for a peerage_, either at present, or when 
their party comes in. And then the peers from Scot^ 
land and Ireland have totally changed the proportion 
originally engaged for those two kingdoms. In one 
single consideration this is a very important affair. The 
lords act as a court of judicature in cases of appeal. It 
is true they have no original jurisdiction over causes : 
that is quite settled by all great authorities and deci- 
sions : but even here, by a sort of side wind, and un- 
opposed, unexamined custom, they are in the habit 
of exercising what is tantamount in effect to original 
jurisdiction in one very important class of cases. It is 
true that it is only done in the shape of Reference and 
Advice; but it often operates as fatally on a subjects 
rights as if it was a judicial decision. But I have 
already discussed this in a separate treatise, and shall 
not repeat it here. I have indeed seen two immense 
folio volumes of what are called a Report of a Lords' 



25 

Committee on this subject : but after examining several 
times this crude and indigested chaos, I could not ex- 
tract a single intelligible position or argument from it. 
Some of the materials may be useful to a particular class 
of antiquaries ; but certainly not to establish the doc- 
trines which there seems to be an endeavour to build 
upon them, by the manner in which they are put forth. 
It is quite certain, and not at all disrespectful to assert, 
that the Resolution of a Lords' Committee cannot be 
stronger than an Act of Parliament ! 

The nobility of England, and the various distinctions 
of it, are i^erj little understood upon the Continent, A 
new Irish peer carries as good a port, and as much re- 
spect, as the most ancient English. I will not say (as 
many are in the habit of saying, with some plausibility), 
that the old nobility are worn out ! 

The reader may perhaps be surprised to hear that the 
oldest English peerage now possessed by inheritance in 
the male line is only of the date of 1442, (21 Hen. 6.) 
But he will not be surprised to hear that it is that of 
Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, The second is less guessed: 
it is of Lord Stourton^ 1448. And of the same date is the 
Barony of Abergavenny (a barony by tenure), so far as 
it came by blood to the Neviles, It must be observed, 
that not only the ancestors of the Neviles and Talbots, 
but also of the Clintons, Berkeley s^ and Hastingses^ 
were peers in the male line before the death of 
Henry III. (1272) — but the baronies have passed away 
into the female line : and the Greys (of Stamford)^ 
Cliffords, and Courtenays are of the same early date ; 
but they are younger branches : and in two of them 
the earlier honours have been long since forfeited. 
Then comes the Dukedom of Norfolk^ 1483, and Earl' 
dam of Derby, 1486. Then the order stands thus :— 

'^Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury. 
"*Stourton Lord Stourton. 
Nevile Lord Abergavenny. 
^Howard Duke of Norfolk. 
5. Stanley Earl of Derby. 



26 

Somerset Lord Herbert of Ragland, 1506. 

Berkeley Lord Berkeley, 1507. 

Manners Earl of Rutland, 1525. 

Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, 1529. 
10. Powlett Lord St. John of Basing, 1529. 

Russell Lord Russell, 1539. 

Seymour Duke of Somerset, 1547. 

Devereux, Viscount Hereford, 1550. 

Herbert Lord Herbert, 1551. 
15. Howard Lord Effingham, 1554. 

Brydges Lord Chandos,* 1554. 

St. John Lord St. John, 1559. 

Sackvillet Lord Buckhurst, 1567- 

West Lord Delawarr, 1570. 

Cecil Lord Burleigh, 1570. 
21. Clinton Earl of Lincoln, 1572. 

* A late list of t^peerage has called this peerage extinct. 
It becomes, ther^re, an imperious necessity to name it 
here. A peerage granted by letters patent is a common-law 
right ; and no man can be divested of it but by attainder, 
act of parliament, due process of taw, or legal trial in course 
o^ judicature. All this has not only been solemnly decided 
by the courts, over and over again, but stands secured, 
totidem verbis, in a series of statutes from Magna Cliarta to 
the celebrated statute which passed the Bill of Rights, temp. 
Charles I. (See Hume,) To talk of extinction, therefore, 
would be insult, if it should not have proceeded from in- 
advertence. 

It would be as degrading as it would be tiresome to say 
more on the present occasion. 

The question is here put beyond the power of any man 
to controvert it, who knows the laws and constitution of 
England; and if he does not know them, he has not a 
pretence to give an opinion, or make an assertion on the 
subject. 

f The old Sackville property of Kent and Sussex, of 
which a part had been many centuries in the family, has 
at length passed away into the female line, by the death of 
the Duchess dowager of Dorset, Aug. 1825. The male line 
of this old Norman family is recorded in the pages of 
Ordericus Vitalis, 



27 

Thus it is that tliey whose peerages of the male Unit 
are of a date prior to the death of Queen Elizabeth, are 
only twenty-one. 

I believe that these families form any thing ratber 
than a set, or two or three sets ! ! ! The new families 
are they which are most busy and most anxious to take 
the lead in what is called \hQ fashionable world, and 
to distinguish themselves by such paltry means ! Even 
to lead the fashion requires a great deal of exertion 
and fatigue ; though it is exertion and intrigue very ill 
spent ! The richest person from the Stock Exchange 
will, by a little perseverance, and after pocketing a few 
airs and insults at the outset, be sure to beat at last by 
mere weight of purse 1 

I have rarely seen haughty and offensive airs among 
the nobility, except among the utteily new nobihty ; 
and who are not only new nobles, but' persons of very, 
low birth and alliances, and who had obtained their 
peerage by means either corrupt, or at least uncon- 
nected with merit. It is known that among the 
proudest of the modern nobles are those, whose pre- 
decessors not long ago bought their honours, and whose 
delight therefore is to busy themselves in shutting the 
door upon the rights of others ! 

During the time which a discussion of a claim of 
peerage before the lords, in which I was interested, 
was prolonged, above 70 new peerages were poured 
into the lords — and no small portion of those who were 
living at the commencement of the case died before 
the conclusion; while new bishops took their seats on 
deaths, sometimes twice over. Suppose judges in courts 
of law should change once or twice over during the 
progress of a cause — what would be the consequence ? 
or rather, suppose juries should do so- — how could the 
latter come to a verdict on that part of the evidence at 
which they had not been present ? There is not in the 
world so inconvenient and so ill-constituted a tribunal 
for the trial of facts, as a Committee of Lords — -ad- 
journing from day to day — week to week»— and year to 
year- — and at every meeting changing their racnibers \ 



28 

It IS an entire subyersion of the spirit, as well as the 
letter, of the Constitution ! It has not any one of the 
qualities or properties which forms the protection de^ 
rived from a jury ! 

The largest landed properties in England are under* 
stood to be those of the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke 
of Bedford, the Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of 
Rutland, the Duke of Portland, the Marquis of Staf- 
ford^ and Lord Fitzwilliam^^ etc. I do not attempt to 
class them exactly according to their degrees. The two 
first are well known tp have come principally* out of 
the harvest of the Reformation — the third and fourth 
are principally ancient feudal property. The others are 
accumulations of marriage and alliances. The mass of 
ihe Rutland and Northumberland manors dates either 
from the Conqueror s grant, or from the twelfth cen- 
tury. A great part of the Stafford was the well-merited 
fruit of the late Duke of Bridgewater's magnificent ap-^ 
plication of his patriotic mind to the project of canals, 
operating on a noble estate. The grand feature of this 
fine property was formed out of the great inheritance 
of the Stanleys Earls of Derby, whose co-heiress was 
married to John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater; 
when it seems as if Lord Chancellor Egerton, the Earfs 
father, vested a portion of his own acquired riches in 
purchasing portions from the other co-heirs of Stanley .*f 
The Stanleys had inherited the great feudal property of 
the Stranges. I believe that the husbands of the other 
two co-heirs — Lady Chandos and the Countess of Ifunt-? 

* But the Duke of Devonshire has also the great Irish 
property made by Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Corke .* 
and the Newcastle branch of the Cavendish property enriches 
the Duke of Portland, 

1 1 have often heard the amount of the rental of the late 
Duke, when he succeeded to the property, but not with 
sufi&cient accuracy to venture to name it. The Duke ex- 
pended his whole revenue, and all the money he could 
borrow, for the greater part of his life, in carrying on this; 
magnificent canal project.-^See Dupin's Eulogy. 



29 

ingdon — were not in a condition to purchase. At that 
time neither of those families was rich. 

Lord Grosvenor has a large property, but it is an en- 
tirely new one — derived from his paternal grandmother, 
who brought the land about Grosvenor Square, which 
has eventually turned out such a mine of wealth. The 
Blenheim estate was principally crown and parliamen- 
tary grants, temp. Queen Anne ; but it is now somewhat 
shorn. 

Old Bui^leigh made a fine property out of his places, 
in spite of Queen Elizabeth's penuriousness — but his 
son, the first Earl of Exeter, complained bitterly of po- 
verty. 

Lord Thanet has the old feudal property of the Clif- 
fords, Earls of Cumberland. 

Foreigners do not easily apprehend the nature of 
English rank ; and the distinctions of cast, which 
used to exist in England, they cannot of course be aware 
of, because they are now extinct in England itself. I 
can remember them in some force, though not per- 
haps in their full force. Our diplomacy is now filled 
in a different manner from that of former times :— 
if gieat talent and experience is substituted for rank 
and fortune, more perhaps is gained than lost ; but this 
happens only in a few rare instances ! New men and 
weak men love to have about them newer men, and 
weaker men, than themselves. Since former barriers 
are thrown down, they who push the most, and who 
have no pride to deter them from hawking themselves 
about by the aid of introductions (always to be had hy 
those who will ask for them), make the most way, the 
most noise, and receive the most favour. A family sud- 
denly grown rich cannot do better than come abroad : 
they will be received by as much company as they can 
desire. And as to those Countesses and Marchionesses, 
whose bloom has been a little touched by the sharp 
air of London, they may come forth again in double 
lustre under the very best patronage of English society 
abroad ! — the patronage of rank and correct conduct 



30 

and sanctity ; and all else that can ensure them notice 
and civility! 

This is all which I shall say at present of English so- 
ciety abroad : two months ago I had written much more, 
but it is committed to the flames. I prefer writing of 
literature, though literature also has its foUies^ its ab- 
surdities, its affectations, and its vices. I bave seen 
tourists, and politicians, and philosophers, and poets, 
and novelists: — those wbo can write very laughable 
and witty prose-descriptions, and those whose poetry is 
as glittering as a spangled pavement, or a lady's court- 
dress of diamonds : those who can touch the heart, that 
loves to be sentimental, with gentle and unfatiguing 
tears*— and those who can tickle the ill-natured ears of 
the day by epigrammatic jokes on the writings of old 
women of a former age, however wise and eloquent,— 
because they have not survived to adopt the petty taste 
of the dandy coteries of rank and office, who write for 
a certain widely-patronized Review I Critics, forgetful 
of the family friendship of a former generation, and 
insensible to merits, in which the soundest sense, the 
deepest penetration, and the noblest tone of pure mo- 
rality is united to the clearest, most vigorous, and most 
perfect style : in which there is all the strength of John- 
son without his pomp ; and all his lucidness of ratioci- 
nation, without any of his bigotry or spleen :— Critics 
endeavouring to blight, by a mean and pitiful affecta- 
tion of contempt, the circulation among popular readers 
of a Series of Letters^ which possess every sort of sound 
attraction : the genuine and confidential correspond- 
ence of a long life, full of wisdom, instruction, learning, 
and eloquence : — in which there is nothing temporary, 
nothing trifling ; but where the whole is the matured 
result of a mind most extraordinarily gifted by nature, 
and perfected by study : — in which the matter and the 
manner are equally excellent ! I have seen the popular 
writer of the Northern Continent, whose frankness and 
warmth of heart, and unaffected manners, give a stamp 
to the merits of bis widely-circulating works; — a man 
whose freedom from envy and rivalry, whose sincerity 



31 

and strength of feeling give a weight and test of value 
to his sentiments which they will never lose, — because 
it proves that they come from the heart. 

Lord Byron, who had always led a manly and rough 
life, was in the habit of expressing some indignant im- 
patience at the fastidious complaints and disgusts of 
occasional inaccommodations experienced by the 
few literary friends who visited him from London, 
and who were in the habit of daily luxuriating 
themselves at the tables and drawing-rooms of rich 
Earls and finical Duchesses — in the excess of all the 
artificial habits of that corrupt and overgrown capital ! 
Lord Byron could sleep, wrapped in his rough great 
coat, on the hard boards .of a deck, while the wind 
and waves were roaring round him on every side ; and 
could subsist on a crust, and a glass of water ! The 
mighty bard led the life, as he wrote the strains, of a 
true poet ! But I have said of Jam in other places, as 
much at least as the poisoned public will hear!— It 
would be difficult to persuade me, that he who is a 
coxcomb in his manners, and artificial in his habits of 
life, could write good poetry !— It may be said, that 
Gray was so ; — ^but with him it was, (such as it was, 
and it was a fault,) merely upon the surface: he led 
an independent life ; and would never inix with the 
silliness of fashion. — »Sir Walter Scott— the great living 
genius— is a man of easy, careless manners ; and takes 
life, and society, as it comes. — Wordsworth is a man 
of great plainness, and manly disdain of fashionable 
life, and those whom the thoughtless multitude, with all 
their clamours for equality, consider to be the greats and 
as such the objects of envy and extorted respect. Sim- 
plicity, and integrity of mental and moral constitution 
and habit, are among Wordsworth's characteristics. 
All his writings also are full of profound and anxious 
thought. 

I was acquainted with Bloomfield, the Farmer's Boy. 
Simplicity of mind and heart was his great beauty : he 
had not a cross of affectation or vanity. He was shy, 
timid, and had, I think, loo little confidence in himself. 



32 

He was not a great genius : but he was an unquestion- 
able genius : he had poetical invention ; and some of 
his tales have peculiar, original, and even exquisite 
merit in their class. He wanted elevation and strength; 
and the original materials of his fancy tended too much 
to the colloquial and homely. He died under the im- 
me<liate pressure of povert}'^, which the public ought 
not to have suffered. The stamina of life were in him 
probably not adapted to great age ; for he had not the 
appearance of a strong and healthy frame : but death 
was hastened by anxiety and mortification. Poets are 
not very well fitted to be long-lived. It may seem as 
if one was playing on words to say that, of the literary 
classes, A7itiquaries commonly live the longest : — it arises 
probably from a constantly amusing, but unwearying, in- 
exhausting occupation. There are occupations of the 
mind which prolong life : there are others which wear 
it out. I remember talking to Sir Gilbert Blane about 
the age of Sir Joseph Banks : " zY is the activity of his 
mind^'' said he, *^' which keeps him alive,'*'* 

And this leads to the expression of deep regret for 
the fate of a friend, at whose table this conversation oc- 
curred : — the late Sir Alexander Boswell : he was a man 
of very lively mind— of considerable talents — some genius 
—an abundance of mingled and irregular wit and hu- 
mour. I knew the father also — Johnson's friend — and 
I think the son had the stronger mind — and certainly 
the manlier and more decided character. Sir Alexander 
had scarcely laid his younger brother, James^ in the 
grave, when an unmerited fate closed a life, of which 
he was then in the full vigour of enjoyment. So much 
for the ven9m of bitter and hateful politics ! ! James 
Boswell destroyed his health and weakened his facul- 
ties by the excess of his social habits ; by the delights 
of the hospitable table :< — but he was a man overflow- 
ing with vivacity and drollery of mind and manner ; 
— and had probably better abilities, and more origi- 
nality of mind, as well as more acquired knowledge 
than his brother. Well-read persons remember what 
Gray said of the father s Corsica ; but the Life of 



S3 

Johnson exhibits not merely a very extraordinary me 
mory, but extraordinary quickness and clearness of 
apprehension. Mrs. Barbauld however did not approve 
this work ; she says, '-we are reading in idle moments, 
or rather dipping into BosweUs Life of Johnson* It 
is like going to Ranelagh : you meet all your acquain- 
tance ; but it is a base and a mean thing to bring thus 
every idle word into judgment — the judgment of the 
public." 

Mrs. Barbauld goes on to give her own character of 
Dr. Johnson ; — and it is the only severe one she has 
given. She says : 

" Johnson, I think, was far from a great character ; 
he was continually sinning against his conscience, and 
then afraid of going to hell for it. A christian, and a 
man of the town ; a philosopher, and a bigot ; acknow- 
ledging life to be miserable, and making it more 
miserable through the fear of death ; professing great 
distaste to the country, and neglecting the urbanity of 
towns ; a jacobile, and pensioned ; acknowledged to 
be a giant in literature, and yet we do not trace him, 
as we do Locke, or Rousseau, or Voltaire, in his in- 
fluence on the opinions of the times. We cannot say 
Johnson first opened this vein of thought ; led the way 
to this discovery or this train of thinking. For his 
style, he was original, and there we can track his imi-. 
tators. In short, he seems to be one of those who 
have shone in the belles lettrjss^ rather than what he is 
held out by many to be, an original and deep genius 
in investigation." 

There is some point in this criticism, but it is more 
sharp than just. What good man does not sin against 
his conscience, and then feel regret for it ? What 
opposition is there between a christian, and a man of 
the town ? What inconsistency is there in weariness 
of life, with fear of the state which may succeed it ? 
We do not prefer the country to the town for the pur- 
pose of indulging discourtesy and rudeness ; nor the 
town to the country because we love gentleness of 
temper and manner. Why should a man refuse a 

C2 



fairly-earned pension from a government whose mea- 
sures he had supported, because he thought the title 
of its ancestors not so good as that of those whom they 
had displaced. He had not supported their politics 
against those whose title he had in early life espoused ; 
but against those who were in principle and act the 
unqualified enemies to that title ! Why had he not as 
much influence on the times as Locke, Rousseau, and 
Voltaire ? Because he was more a moralist than a poli- 
tician : because he sought to propagate truth — not 
novelty ; and because his writings could not be used to 
serve the purposes of parties and factions I As to open- 
ing new trains of thought,—- there are no discoveries 
to be made in morals : though there are in philosophy. 
Then as to his powers and merits being confined to 
the belles lettres : it is quite novel, to hear the name 
of genius confined to the investigations of science ! — 
If so, what becomes of Shakespeare and Milton — or what 
becomes of Addison ? — 

This character is an instance of that perversion of 
ability, into which the most candid writers some limes 
fall, when under the influence of a little spleen : and 
how easy it is to give a point to censure, which, though 
fallacious, is sure, before it is examined, to make a 
strong impression ! 

Mrs. Barbauld, indeed, is not very happy in her 
characters. She has entirely mistaken the character of 
Mrs. Montagu.* She says, " with all her advantages she 
seems not to have been happy?" — Now no one led a 
happier life than Mrs. Montagu. Her spirits were 
lively, and her temper eminently serene and good- 
humoured. She was a general favourite ; her manners 
were in the highest degree attractive ; her talents for 
conversation were universally admitted to be of the 
first brilliance : she was visited, courted, flattered, 
pursued : she was intimate with all that was eminent 
ibr genius and literature, as well as rank^ To be ad- 
mitted to her table or her drawing-room, was deemed 

* Vol. 2, page 139. 



35 

a proud distinclion : and there was assembled all that 
was splendid in accomplished aristocracy, or untitled 
talent and literature.* Mrs. Montagu was not only 
endowed by nature with a sagacity, an imagination, a 
command of language very rarely equalled ; but she 
passed a life of eighty years, in all the best, as well as 
the most varied society of England, in which her singu- 
lar gifts had the most perfect and constant opportunity 
of enriching, exercising, and improving themselves ; 
and she had a fund of humour and ridicule, which 
enabled her to seize and paint characters with unerr- 
ing certainty, and resistless effect. But her extreme 
good-nature curbed the sportive sallies of her wit. 
They who have lived with her— (and I can resort to 
good and certain authority) — say, she was never seen 
out of humour. Yet this is the person whom Mrs. 
Barbauld has pronounced not happy. She had her 
little foibles :— she was too fond of ostentation ; of the 
world ; and the world's ways ! f She loved greatness a 
little too much ; but she was never haughty or dis- 
obhging, to the humblest. 

Mis. Montagu and Mrs. Carter, the two most ex- 
traordinary women of their age, were early intimate. 
They both of them belonged to Kent, though the for- 
mer was born at York. Mrs. Carter was born at Deal, 
(of which town her father was minister,) in 1719. Mrs. 
Montagu was born in 1720. Her father s mansion was 
at Horton, about five miles from Hythe — where five- 
and-twenty years ago I frequented the old mansion ; 

* Why has Mr. Montagu published so very few of her 
immense masses of letters ; and these not the best, but 
positively the worst? In no other series would there be 
found so many delightful literary notices ; so many brilliant 
delineations of character ; so many registers of the progress 
and conversational opinions of the highest orders of authors 
— of Burke^ Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Bath, Horace 
Walpole, etc. etc. It is but an ill return to his aunt's 
memory for the fortune and name she bestowed upon him. 

f In this respect, no two near relations were ever so 
unlike as she and her brother Lord Rokeby. 



36 

placed in a noble park : — but now, alas, the park is 
wasted, and the mansion tumbling rapidly into the 
most mournful ruins. Mrs. Carter's residence, on the 
sea shore of Deal, has a better fate ; and is still in- 
habited and cherished by her nephew ! 

There is something of a generous virtue in religiously 
preserving the abodes of genius. Voltaire's chateau is 
yet sacredly guarded. It is owned and inhabited by 
Mr, de Bude^ the descendant of the learned Greek 
scholar of that name.— the friend of Erasmus. 

I walked, in 1819, with strange emotion, through 
the rooms at Coppet^ so lately inhabited by Madame 
de Stael : — there stood the table at which she con- 
stantly wrote \-^->there hung the little shelves of books 
which she used ! In front, was the broad and 
tumbling lake which Lord Byron delighted to cross 
from Coligny, — when it was most tempestuous — to 
visit her ! He was a glorious spirit, — however mighty 
were his faults — and has immortalized by his presence 
every spot on which he resided ! To think of him, 
gives an impulse of fire to the dulness of life ; and 
peoples the scenes of existence with adventure, variety, 
and hope I 

It has been said that Lord Byron was a temporary 
meteor : but his compositions must live, while the 
language lives : they are made up of vitality. I know 
many, who have been great favourites, but will ?iot 
live! Many of the club of wits, who attempted to drive 
out Pitt, in 1784, will not live. Who now remembers 
the Rolliad? I recollect the editor. Dr. French Law- 
rence, (elder brother of the present Archbishop of 
Cashell.) He was a very able man ; but a little too 
ambitious and affected in his style of poetry. He has 
written some beautiful sonnets, which are little known. 
They are printed in the Poetical Register^ or some 
other collection, about twenty years back. He pro- 
mised a life of his friend, Burke, which he never lived to 
execute. He was a Bristol man; and educated at Corpus 
Christi College, Oxford, where the present Chief Jus- 
tice of the King's Bench was three or four years his junior. 



37 

Who now reads The Pursuits of Literature ? What 
mysteries were once made about the author of that 
poem ? I cannot doubt that Mr. Mathias^ whom I 
saw at Naples about four years ago, wrote it. I will 
in frankness confess, that the poetry is not much to my 
taste ; and though some of the notes are amusing and 
ingenious, a great part of them are more ambitious 
than sound. The first author on whom I set my eyes 
at Cambridge, five-and-forty years ago, was Mathias, 
then busy with his Runic Odes^ and his Rowley, I 
think he was a warm Rowleian^ which did not shew 
much literary penetration. Tom Warton had at that 
time written his beautiful and decisive pamphlet on the 
subject. But the great Rowley advocate was Dr. Glyn, 
a wit, and an eccentric physician, a fellow of King's, 
— then of great celebrity, — now forgotten. He worked 
himself into a mania on the subject. No man ac- 
quainted with the ancient English idiom can read a 
page of Rowley's poems, without feeling a positive 
certainty that the composition is modern. 

Another question of literary mystery has been again 
started in the present year. The public is once more 
assailed on the subject of the Letters of Junius. I have 
not yet seen Mr. Coventry's new volume on this subject : 
—but I will venture to give my present opinion even in 
face of what I understand to be its object. A priori^ 
I cannot believe Lord Sackville to have been the author 
of Junius. Among my reasons are these : Cumberland^ 
who was familiar with him, and whose competence 
to form a correct judgment on such a question cannot 
be doubted, says, (if my memory does not fail me) 
that this nobleman had not cultivated literature ; and 
had no taste for it. It may be answered, that know- 
ledge of politics does not imply a knowledge of other 
parts of literature. But it is not the matter, it is at 
least as much the polished and artificial style, by which 
these letters are characterised. The epigi^mmatic 
point, the extreme and finished terseness, is a still more 
striking feature than the keenness of the satire, or the 
ingenuity of the argument. There are some styles of 



38 

eloquence, which may be attained by the force of 
nature ; — there are others which require not only great 
artificial skill, but long and habitual practice. He who 
wrote as Junius wrote, had certainly employed much 
of his life in literary composition. No coincidence of 
opinions, no congeniality of resentment, can with me 
get over this fundamental objection to the belief that 
Lord Sackville could be the author of these letters. 

But these are not the only ones. I have not the 
letters at hand ; and my memory will not enable me 
to point out particulars : but my impression is, that 
much of the politics will not agree with the life and 
character of Lord Sackville. It is understood, that 
the only family of politicians, never censured, are the 
Greni^illes. There was nothing in Lord Sackville' s 
connexions and history, to account for this : — nor, 
in my opinion, not tending to produce the reverse. 

Among all the persons hitherto named, the author 
to whom I would ascribe these letters, is Richard 
Gloi^er., the author of Leonidas. None of these ob- 
jections apply to him. It is said that this ingenious 
man was in the confidence of the Grenvilles: to which 
it has been haughtily answered, that the Grenvilles 
would never trust their state secrets to a man of the 
condition of Piichard Glover ! Really, this is not a 
little ridiculous !! I can hardly think that Lord Gren- 
ville could ever have held out such unaccountably aris* 
tocratic and unstatesmanlike language ! Very many 
arguments are in favour of Glover s right : — I have yet 
heard not one against it : — to every other claimant there 
are insurmountable objections. Glover's talents were 
equal to it ; but it is said, that he had not the same terse- 
ness of slyle. I am not sure of that : — but of coiu'se 
he would not write private memoirs with the same 
laboured compression, as letters put forth with so much 
anxiety and effort. 

Vanity would have induced many men to have at last 
disclosed the secret : of all the supposed authors, Glover 
had in this respect the least impulse to do so. He had 
already, rightly or wrongly, received the homage of a 



39 

great Epic poet. If Lord Grenville really knows any 
thing of the matter, the time is now arrived when he 
may safely tell it. Glover's son is dead ; and no near re- 
lations of the family remain to be affected by it. I pro- 
test against the inference that I admire Glover s poetry, 
(which I could never read.) or that I think there 
is the "wonderful genius and force in the letters of 
Junius which is commonly ascribed to theni. They are 
full of intense malignity, and many false points; many 
inaccurate contrasts ; and many sophistical conclusions. 
They are most in the manner of Home Tooke: but 
he was one of the severest objects of their attack. 
What must have been the tact and skill in stjle, (not 
to say matter and tone of mind,) of those stupid 
people who could ascribe them to Burke ? 

There must have been something accidental in the 
strength of curiosity and interest regarding Junius, 
which has been kept alive to this day. Much perhaps 
is to be ascribed to the non-removal of the veil, which 
still leaves room for the play of conjecture. There is 
little of essential and permanent truth in them ;— • 
liltle which can form the materials of history. 

The puppets which fill up the mass of an adminis- 
tration, the rubbish which fills up the interstices of the 
wall, do not last long enough to be re-used as ingredi- 
ents in composing the pages of the great historian. It 
was a crisis of little men. No man, whom nature had 
not endow^ed with great talents, stands prominent in 
future national annals merely in right of his office. 
Who cares for Dudley, Earl of Leicester ; or Yilliers, 
Duke of Buckingham; or Arlington; or Pelham ; or 
Percival? Harley, a man of moderate abilities, has 
been somewhat more consecrated by one of the noblest 
pieces of Pope's poetry. 

With the exception of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth 
did not employ one minister, or state officer, or in 
military capacities, who was not either a man of genius, or 
of eminent talent : for the great talents of Burleigh, and 
his son Sir Robert Cecil, cannot be doubted. Lord Buck- 
hiirst, (Sackville) wa^; next to Spenser, the greatest poet 



oF his day ; atid what is more, he was partly Speilser's 
model in allegoric imagery ; and sometimes his superior 
in sublimity. 

I have mentioned Pope, I have not seen Mr, Bowles's 
pamphlets in defence of the judgment he has pro^ 
nounced on the poet ; but I protest against the manner 
in which that controversy is conducted in the Quar- 
terly Review, If we estimate Pope by his Eloisa to 
Ahelard^ few will be entitled to stand above himc If 
we judge from the general tone of his intellect, feel- 
ings, and the major part of his poems, he belongs to a 
subordinate class. It is vain to talk ^Qwlfmish and eo:- 
ecution : finish and execution cannot change the essence 
of the thought, imagination, and sentiment. — Without 
invented incidents, either sublime, or pathetic, or 
beautiful — and at the same time true to nature — there 
can be no pure and genuine poetry ! One is sick of hear- 
ing idle stuff' about the mere flowery poetry of figurative 
language — about similes and metaphors, and oriental 
gaudiness. This is the poetry of the milliner and the 
dress-maker : one does not wonder therefore that 
young ladies die with raptures at it ! Tlie plainest 
passages of Milton's poetry are the most excellent ; — 
and so they are of Dante s ! 

In the generality of modern novels, as well as 
of modern poetry, there is scarcely any invention : — Sir 
Walter Scott's invention is inexhaustible ; and of the 
true kind, because it is the invention of character and 
incidents, placed in new combinations. Mrs. Smith 
was an inventor of great beauty, and great truth. Celes^ 
tina in the Hebrides, and Geraldine in the old manor 
house in Herefordshire, are exquisite ; and then her 
poetry is, of its kind, touched with inimitable pathos, 
melody, and grace. Yet — shame to the age — Mrs. 
Smith begins to be forgotten ! 

It is one of those inconsistencies which we encounter 
in the whims of the world, that even in France, under 
the return of the old dynasty, Voltaire, the great 
apostle of Revolution, seems to be in as much demand 
as ever ; and large editions of his interminable volumes 
still continue to be printed both iu magnificent forms 



41 

and for the pocket. I know not if his Enghsh disciple, 
Lord Chesterfield, is equally called for: — a man, 
whose profligacy and [shameless inconsistency of prin- 
ciples can never be encountered without disgust. 

Lord Chesterfield's selfishness blinded the acuteness 
of his understanding ; and his contemptuous opinion of 
the sagacity of mankind made him hazard the most 
obvious contradictions, to gain a momentary applause. 
He says of his friend, Lord Scarborough, that '- he had 
not the least pride of birth and rank — that common 
narro'w notion of little minds ; that wretched mistaken 
succedaneum of merit ; hut he was jealous to anxiety 
of his character^ as all men are^ who deserve a good 
one,'' Now from whom does this proscription of the 
pride of birth and rank come? From him whose 
whole system is built on skill in the manners and for- 
mulai'ies of fashion and high life ! Who contended, 
that all virtue lay in outward appearance; — in the 
polish of the surface ! AVho encouraged hypocrisy and 
artifice ; and thought that there was no immoralityr 
but in awkwardness and rudeness ! "Who contended 
that all Johnson s genius, and wisdom, and learning, 
and moral eloquence, were worthless, if his person 
was uncouth, his address vulgar, and his behaviour at 
the table or in the drawing-room coarse and uncon- 
formable to the customs of high life ! Whose whole life 
was spent in the setting up the model of a man of 
fashion; and who, not content to practise it himself, 
dehberately reduced it into a written system ; and 
openly inculcated that the only crimes which he could 
not forgive in his son, -were those which offended 
against this system ! Who not merely wrote thus, but 
shewed his sincerity by acting upon it : — Avho hated, 
and used cruelly his son, and turned him into bitter 
ridicute, because his careless and natural manners made 
him neglect some of those pettitesses of apeish mode, 
which he had taught as the golden rules of life. 

Perhaps the father's offended vanity has instilled into 
the world a false idea of this son s character. He was 
a young man of distinguished talents ; eminent for his 



42 

quickness and classical attainments at Westminster 
school— and much beloved by his friends and acquain- 
tance for his frank and naive character"^— a sort o\ bon-* 
hommie approaching to a simplicity which was attrac- 
tive to the good, and the manly — but which was hateful 
to his factitious and heartless father.f 

Walter Harte^ the poet, was the son's tutor. Lord 
Chesterfield himself had, of course, made this choice. 
Yet Tie ridicules this tutors unfitness, on the allegation 
of unpolished manners, want of knowledge of the 
world, and recluse scholastic habits. Ilarte's genius 
and erudition appear not to have operated the least to- 
wards the favourable opinion of this titled coxcomb of 
literature ! 

What is the sort of aristocracy which this noble 
author would have had ? Or would he have had none 
at all ? He certainly would not have had Dr. Johnson 
ennobled on account of his genius and substantial 
merits — because, on his principles, Johnson's outward 
manner utterly disqualified him ! Were riches to be 
the qualification ? the manners of a jew broker, or a 
contractor, would probably exhibit a bar equally in- 
superable! 

Perhaps it will be contended that all which this ad-- 
mired author meant was, the necessity of personal 
merit as well as bii^th — and that merit and polished 
manners were synonymous in his mind ! I will leave 
him then to rest on that defence, if it will avail 
him : and go to the question of aristocracy <5r nobility 
itself. 

It is a diflScult question, if examined with profundity 
and impartiality. No doubt it is liable to great abuses, 
and has a strong tendency to great abuses. It is ad- 
mitted that there must be inequalities in the rank and 
station of mankind, if property be allowed.* And 
where is the country in the world in which it has not 

* His son Philip Dormer Staahope died in the Rue d& la 
Paix, at Paris, in July, 1825. 

t 1 learn this from one of his schoolfellows* 



43 

existed ; or which can go on wilhout giving security 
to it, or confirming its inheritabiUty ? But the arts and 
exertions, by ^vhich wealth is procured, are, too often, 
not the most honourable, most virtuous, or most inno- 
cent. It is not till the taint of these arts is worn out, 
and a more liberal spirit introduced, by a cast of in- 
dependent descents, that the superiority becomes mel- 
lowed and safe to others.* I consider, therefore, a 
true aristocracy to be a wholesome and even neces- 
sary counterpoise to the selfishness and insolence of new 
wealth. 

I know that tlie common opinion is the reverse of 
this. " This or that family," they cry, " is become 
veiy rich ; therefore give them rank and title ! " Now 
riches are always powerful enough by themselves in the 
eyes of the base world : they do not want collateral 
aid, to give them dominion. But it will be urged, 
that a poor aristocracy will for this very reason he 
soon overturned, and trod underfoot by untitled wealth 
refused its due weight in society ; and that this is one 
of the dangers to which France, from its present state, 
is evidently exposed. — I admit it. — ^It is a great, and I 
fear inevitable danger ! Yet I know not how, under 
the circumstances which had befallen the nation, it 
could have been prevented ! Yet I see no reason, 
why, in Great Britain, h\r\h and riches might not have 
been united in the mass of the peerage. A few 
ancient titles would have necessarily descended withotit 
an adequate inheritance of property. 

Whether these principles be right or wrong, certain 
it is that not the smallest regard has been paid to them 
since the commencement of Mr. Pitt's administration, 
in 1784. Men were made peers who were very useful 
and respectable as country gentlemen, but who had 
no shadow of claim or pretence to be elevated to the 
peerage in England: — (still much less regard was paid 

* I have the high authority of Bacon for this train of 
opinions, however whimsical and far fetched it may appear 
to many. 



in creations to the Irish peerage, which has ended in 
their ascent to the English house in very many cases.) 
— These evils never close with the first false step : 
— but are always progressive — et acquirunt vires 
eundo I 

It seems as if successive ministers had volunteered 
to bring upon the country the great evil to which Ari- 
stocracy was liable — and which in England might 
easily have been avoided — a poor and unillustrious 
peerage / at the same time it is in England, of all other 
countries, the most dangerous — because in England it 
comes in conflict with the greatest quantity of new and 
powerful wealth ! 

At one time every diplomatic man, who had done no 
more than his duty in some mission, every general and 
admiral who had not failed in the command of a battle, 
every lawyer promoted to the chiefship of secondary 
courts — was made a peer. At least seventeen lawyers, 
sixteen military, and fourteen naval men, with seven 
or eight diplomatists, have been promoted to the House 
of Lords in my time, with 16 Scotch peers-— and 31 
Irish peers- — Total, 102. What occasion to make peers 
of Chief Justices of the Common Pleas? Why every 
Irish Chancellor, who might be elevated to the wool- 
sack of that kingdom, because he was found unfit for 
the ofiice he before held ? Many of these new peers will 
necessarily leave small properties to be inherited with 
their new titles. 

Is it asked, if professional and official merit ought 
not to be rewarded ? How were they formerly rewarded ? 
Queen Elizabeth did not make peers of Sir Henry and 
Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Robert 
Cecil ! The chances are that a peerage of historic lustre, 
and wdde-spread alliances, will even keep up its wealth, 
when its numbers are small : — it cannot do so when it 
is so numerous as to be every where promiscuously 
connected with low families ; and when all respect for 
it is gone. 

It seems to me, that in the discharge of its political 
and judicial functions as a grand branch of the Consti- 



as 

lution, a great portion of its benefit is gone, by having 
become too numerous. 

The question of inheritable merit remains to be no- 
ticed. We undoubtedly very often see the expectation 
glaringly falsified. But then no person of common sense 
ever supposed that the good effect would be universal : 
—that it v^ould change our imperfect nature! — There 
will be wickedness and folly in every station : — and 
the stupid and the bad will lake advantage of as- 
sumed counterbalances to indulge the more freely in 
their absurdities and their vices. Instances may be 
named of persons who have taken advantage of the 
lustre of birlh to commit irregularities, v^bich they f4 

would not otherwise have ventured : and feeble intef- j^ ,, ^ ^ m, 
lects sometimes assume to themselves aiT importance in-^*'^*'^'^^^^^''*-^^^'^ ^ 
right of these borrowed advantages, ill-measured and 
offensive: — but they are not very common; and the 
world repays tbem with sufficient sharpness! These 
abuses can form no rational argument against the uses 
of aristocracy, ynless they are powerful enough to over- 
balance ihejn. 

I hear it exclaimed, '' We do not object to aristo^ 
cracy : — but pour the ranks of new wealth into the 
aristocracy, to induce them to niake a common cause 
in its support !" — I answer— it will not do ! I say, as 
was said in James the First's time of a proposed match 
between CeciVs son and Northumberland's daughter— 
Their bloods will not mingle in a bowl together ! — 
The new wealth will soon be all at the top ! 

I do not absolutely insist, a3 they do in Germany 
and Spain, on the sixteen quarters ;* — because, on 

* This expression is not perfectly understood in England, 
It is not, according to the vulgar apprehension, a right to 
quarter 16 coats of arms : but a descent of unmingled 
gentry on all sides, up to the great great great grandfathers 
and grandmothers, in which generation the number is 16; 
viz. two grandfathers and two grandmothers ; in the genera- 
tion above, four of each ; in the third generation, eight of 



46 

this system, one unequal match would destroy the pe- 
digree. 

^ regard to birth has been found to exist at all times 
in every country of the world ; it may therefore be 
taken to be a part of our nature. It is assumed, that 
there is more energy and more exercised intellect in 
those who have been the fabricators of their own for- 
tune : — it may be so— but that does not necessarily in- 
clude more virtue : and then, if these qualities be not 
transmissible, why are they to be possessed by the son 
of the new man — who will therefore have his father's 
meanness of birth without his merit? 

What are the advantages ascribed to an hereditary 
over an elective monarchy ? That it tends to quiet; and 
to allay the spirit of endless competition and conten- 
tion. Is not this equally true of a well-arranged, care- 
fully-conferred aristocracy? But it requires frugal, in- 
corrupt, impartial, intelligent, yet generous dispensa- 
tion : — not to suffer a candidate to found pretensions on 
mere [descent, however distinguished ; nor to be awed 
or influenced by mere riches, however threatening or 
powerful ! 

Notwithstanding the general outcry on the emptiness 
of birth, no one really feels it empty. No one is really 
offended at the elevation of those who have the charm 
of historic lustre, unless they are personally objec* 
tionable ! 

There will and must be distinctions in society, as 
long as there is inequality of property, of talent, and 
of personal exertion: the wisdom of political institu- 
tions is, as far as aristocracy is concerned, to regulate 
and soften them in the least offensive manner. Pitt 
paid no attention to this : he considered them as bau- 
bles, which were the cheapest means of paying those 
whose services he wanted. If the insolence of rank 

each, which forms the 16 quarters. All the continental 
works of genealogy, in the first half of the 17th century, 
have tables of this sort. 



47 

could be softened by tlie present fasliion of decrying 
birth, it would be a great good : but it is in no degree 
softened : it is far more intolerant and insulting than 
ever. It arises probably in part from the soreness of 
the upstart titles, "stIio, conscious of being where they 
ought not to be, endeavour to retain their place by 
affected haughtiness. Foreigners cannot comprehend 
the nature of our classifications and demarcations in 
society: •—no Englishman, when asked, can point out 
to them any principle. I have heard sensible English 
continually complain of the capricious usage which they 
receive. I have heard persons variously circumstanced 
—some of fair families, and fortunes — others not des- 
picable — some even of distinguished blood — cry, " We 
are kept in a perpetual state of uneertainty and irrita- 
tion : — if we could perceive any rule, any intelligible 
line of conduct, however objectionable, set up, and 
acted upon, we should know what to expect, and pre-» 
pare for,' — whether it be birth, or rank, or riches, or 
talent, or place— or manners: — but we find them all 
outraged, mixed, and disregarded, just as suits the 
whim of this or that person who has gained any mo- 
mentary ascendancy; — and yet we are insulted and re- 
proached with the want of any one which we may 
want, as if it was an indispensible sine qua non I " 
*' What a low vulgar fellow is such an one !" they ex- 
claim ; '' I cannot bear to have him of my party !"' 
Perhaps it is answered, " You are much mistaken : 
he is not only a man of elegant manners, but very 
well descended ! and really, my good friend, were your 
charge true, it makes me smile to hear such objections 
from you, whose party the other day was half-made up 
of certain people of notoriously base origin — of coarse 
manners — and blemished characters!" What is the 
reply? — " O dear, w^e must do as the world does — 
birth you know is all a humbug after all : those people 
give very good dinners, and very good assemblies ; and 
what have we to do with any thing else ! Besides, you 
rogue — do not you know that they have the ear of Lord 
and Lady , and there will- be no more countenance 



h8 

in that quarter if we are not civil to tliem ! And what 
a pretty thing for us that would be, if it should be said, 
that the Rollestons of Rolleston Mount were not seen 
at Lady > 's assemblies ! And let me observe, my 
good friend, the thing would not end here : if once a 
touch of this kind takes place ^ it spreads like the ex- 
panding and multiplying circles caused by a stone cast 
into a sntooth water. Lady is not content to with- 
hold her jwn card : she goes round to her chief friends, 
and says : ' My dear Lady -- — - or Mrs. — ^— , I have a 
favour to beg of you : imperious circumstances have 
prevented me from inviting the Rollestons of Rolleston 
Mount to my next assembly! Now I understand that 
you also will have a large party next week 1 May I ask 
you not to send them a card : the contrast would other- 
wise make me so odious f'* 

Wise-acres and optimists will urge that it was always 
so ; and that folly, caprice, and fashion always went* in 
league. I do not admit this : I do not admit that one 
age is exactly like another. Forty years ago, people 
knew their station belter; — and families of moderate 
station, and unassuming spirits, were not held up to 
contempt for not being seen at fashionable assembUes — 
when others of their own class were equally excluded ! 
—Now mere impudence and vulgar intrigue carries the 
day without a check! — Each formerly knew his own 
station ; and each in that station was respected, if his 
conduct did not forfeit esteem. It is true, that if it were 
possible to abolish all artificial distinctions, and pure 
personal merit could take its proper degree of prece- 
dence in society, it would be an admirable amelioration 
in the state of human life. But we know that it cannot 
be ; — that humanity is too imperfect for this I Do we 
get a step nearer to it by throwing down the ancient 
substitutes? The distinctions set up will be far more 
odious than those which are cast away I In former ages 
there was a profligate Lord Rochester, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, Duke of Wharton, Thomas Lord Lyttelton, 
who abused their rank to plunge into all sorts of ex- 
travagance and dissoluteness ! Has folly, absurdity, or 



49 

vice become less fashionable, less a mode of distinc- 
tion, since fashion has not been confined to birth and 
rank ? 

In abandoning the regard to birth, have they who 
are called people of the world set up a better criterion? 
Do they hold genius, or virtue, or amiable conduct iu 
higher estimation than formerly ? Is even the State 
better served because it is not served by t'le same 
class of men? — In the House of Commons this disre- 
gard is positively lamentable, in its powerful effect on 
the minds of the people. The whole language of de- 
bates is utterly changed : there ought to be a perfect 
freedom of speech; but it should be a decorous free* 
doni ! There are men still there, whose oratory is per- 
fectly classical and refined -^such as CaiiJiijig's : — and 
I must do Mr. Peel the justice to testify, that, though 
not equally imaginative and splendid, he is equally de- 
corous ! I cannot approve of an appeal to the violence 
of popular prejudices and pasjsions, clothed in their own 
language ! 

It is the fashion to call these opinions un philosophi- 
cal. This censure implies a somewhat narrow concep- 
tion o^ philosophy, bmce the popular critics applied 
this charge to Burke, it need not much offend. If 
philosophy, when appbed to politics, be wisdom, and 
sound knowledge of the human heart, and of human ac- 
tion resulting from experienced reflection and sagacity, 
then every page of Burke abounds with the most ad- 
mirable philosophy. Mankind will never be mere rea- 
soners, for all that the modern philosophers may urge; 
—nor ought they to be ! They will not be an inch the 
nearer virtue or justice, or sound tests of merit, by 
abolishing regard to rank, and birth, and hereditary 
distinction ! They will only open and facilitate the road 
for the more unopposed and more rapid career of vulgar 
intrigue, corruption, and dishonesty ! There will not 
be fewer or less immoral fools of fashion : but they will 
be more cunning, more gross, more sensual, and more 
deceitful ! 

It is said that talents or virtues are not bereditary.— i 

D 



50 

Not universally, it is true: — but they often are so- 
witness the PittSy Foxes, Yorkes, etc. It was at any 
rate an happy motto — taken by Lord Rodney , whose 
arras were three eagles , on his promotion to the peer- 
age for a great naval victory : 

'• Non generant aquilce columhas^'' 
The great families of England have for some years 
abandoned their strong holds. They have fallen into 
the;o;Y* prepared for them ! As long ago as the reign 
of Henry YII. this scheme was commenced — not in-* 
deed to favour the people — but to augment the power 
of the crown. — Queen Elizabeth persevered in it. The 
Stuarts, through corruption, feebleness, and favour- 
itism — went the other way. The Revolution of King 
William again strengthened the aristocratical branch. 
Queen Anne a little weakened it by the urgency of a 
political crisis, when twelve lords — not of the first 
condition — were poured into the Upper House at once. 
The mistresses of George H. caused a sensible deterio- 
ration. Subsequent ministers, till the dismissal of Lord 
IVorth, were frugal; hut not choice! The East India 
Bill of 1 784— the War— and the Irish Union, have done 
the mischief! 

It is often insinuated that all this is but a senseless 
sort of complaint; — that it is a necessary result from 
what is called the due and beneficial march of human 
affairs: — that it comes from the augmentation of com- 
mercial wealth, and the increasing prosperity of the 

country! 1 suspect that all this is a delusion! — If 

it were so, the landed rental would keep pace with this 
march !— But Mr. Pitt took it into his head, that there 
was no real value, except in what are called (after 
Adam Smith) the productive labourers of the nation. 
He thought, therefore, that in taxation there was no 
harm in loading idle capitalists. The fundholders he 
dared not touch : all the real weight of taxation there- 
fore fell on the landholders — especially those resident 
Q^ix their estates. — The pressure of the Assessed Taxes 

* I mean no pun* 



51 

has absolalely mined, and driven away half the coun- 
Iry-gentlemen of England: — and when they came to 
live in towns, the relics of their fortune were spent in 
rivalry wilh country bankers and shopkeepers! 

The difference in the power of money up to the close 
of Lord North's administration- — even during all the 
apparent gloominess of affairs at the crisis of the Ame- 
rican war — was far more than seems to be understood. 
It will not be believed, when I say that I remember 
country gentlemen at that time, who, upon 1,5001. a- 
year, kept a large estabhshment in the country; — an 
handsome table ; — and spent the winter months in a good 
house in London ; — and this without contracting debts. 

I remember noblemen living splendidly — with every 
sort of old-fashioned parade, — on an income which is 
now deemed (however falsely) scarcely adequate to the 
expenditure of the moderate class of gentry. — I make 
allowances for the vulgar exaggeration on the subject 
of figures : — in which fools think they shew their own 
high notions by talking of thousands as they ought to 
talk of hundreds I "^^ Rents were stationary from about 
the year 1700, or earlier, till 1787 or 17881 Soon after 
the beginning of the present century, they had nearly 
trebled ; but they have fallen bacli 1 

To return to the peerage of England ; the total num- 
ber is now 318: — and 172 of them have been conferred 
since Mr. Pitt commenced his administration in 1784.—^ 
In that time the number extinct is only 42: — increase 
130 — which is an increase equal to more than two^ 
fifths > — besides the 28 representative peers of Ireland ; 
—and the addition of these doubles the size of the 
House of Lords within a fraction. 

The greatest objection which strikes me is the vast 

* About 90 years ago, a private act of parliament, now 
in my possession, passed, dividing the largest estate then 
held by an individual in Kent, into three portions, among 
three .co-heirs ; the rental of each share is specified. The 
third did not exceed 30001. a year. I think it was only 
24001. 



52 

preponderance of lawyers and placemen. I do not 
object to a Lord Chancellor, and Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench : the two chiefs, presiding over the courts 
of equity and law, ought to be there. But it is lament- 
able to have men of another description — men, too, who 
perhaps may not have received a regular and liberal 
education; and who, therefore, view objects in a nar- 
row, ungenerous, unscholarlike, unphilosophical spirit. 

It should be observed, that 78 of the 172 peerages 
were conferred either in the interval of Mr. Pitt's re- 
tirement, or since his death : so that he is only answer- 
able for 94. — His administrations lasted about eighteen 
or nineteen years out of the forty-one and an half, from 
January, 1784. His increase was at the rate of five 
a-year : those of other ministers not quite equal to four. 
The immense influx has been from Ireland and Scot^ 
land. 

At the Coronation of George IV. fifteen peers were 
created: of these, threey^erQ country-gentlemen— Z//^- 
del — Chohncndeley — and Forester, "^In 1814 and 1815, 
nine were created : among these there was no country- 
gentleman. In ISOd^yburteen were created: among 
these were three counlr^^-gentlemen ; Jnson^ Crewe, 
and Ljgon, In 1801, ele^eiz were created : among 
these there was no country-gentleman. Inl797, /owr- 
ieen were created : among these were four country- 
gentlemen; TFodehoLise, Rushout, Powjs, and Lister, 
In il9Qy fifteen were created: among these were six 
country-gentlemen ; Rous, Calthorpe, Basset, Lascelles, 
Campbell, and Rolle. In 1794, ten were created : 
among these vf eve five country-gentlemen; Bridgeman, 
Peachey, Dundas, Curzon, and Pelham. In 1790, six 
-were created : of these there was only one country-gen- 
tleman — Lascelles* In 1785, eight were created : of 
these, five were country-gentlemen ; Egerton of Hea- 
ton,"^ Cocks, Parker y Hill, and Button. Total, 26 
country-gentlemen. I do not deny that a large portion 

^ Baronet, the eldest branch. The Brldgewatcr family , 
though ennobled 180 years before, were a younger branch. 



53 

of these were among the prime gentry ; and that several 
of them had large estates. But there were many men 
of much better descent among the gentry, with the ex- 
ception of three or four. Eight of them were not of 
the male line of the respective names which they bore. 
Fourteen are military peerages, and eleven naval -.Jive 
only officers of state \>— -eight diplomatic. 

On the Continent, where the Noblesse is principally 
titular^ an imperfect conception is entertained of the 
British peerage. By the new Charter in France, a 
Chamber of Peers exists there also : but ex necessitate, 
rei^ produced by the results of the revolutionary pro-* 
scriptions and forfeitures, it has many essential dif- 
ferences of composition ; and, consequently, of moral 
and political weight. The mass of landed property 
possessed by the British peerage is still very great. Per- 
haps something near a third have small estates ; thesd 
therefore greatly reduce the amount of the average 
rental. If we deduct these, it would be difficult to 
. aame an average which would gain assent. The vulgar 
unchastised ideas of riches and income are so extra- 
vagant, that they ascribe 'a rental of twenty or thirty 
thousand pounds a year to men who have not a thou-' 
sand acres in the world ! Throwing in the ten or 
twelve immense estates of our richest peers, I can 
hardly suppose the average of the two-thirds would 
reach fifteen thousand pounds a year ; — I suspect not 
twelve thousand ! 

We must bring the test of facts and experience to 
correct the absurd notions entertained on this subject. 
Not two years ago, the Culford estates in Suffolk, of 
the late Marquis Cornwallis^ consisting of upwards of 
eleven thousand acres, numerous manors, and a noble 
mansion, were advertised for sale; — and the vendors 
themselves only put the annual value at seven thousand 
pounds a-year. Now I appeal to all men of business, 
if an estate of this size often occurs.'^ Part of it might 

* About 25 years ago, Dr. Beeke, now Dean of Bristol, 
T?ho was Lord Bexlej's tutor, and had great access to 



54 

be Suffolk sands : I am sure that about Culford, the 
^soil was deep, though it might be too wet. 

We hear of private men of new famiUes, who are 
said to have come into immense property ; and are cited 
as giving proof of it by the rate of their expenditure. 
But these are commonly men who have their capital at 
command; and live on this capital for a few years, till 
the whole is spent. In this way, 100,0001. or 150,0001. 
will make a great shew for a short period : yet it would 
not buy a rental of more than 3,D00L or4.(K)01. a-year. 
About forty- two years ago, the late Marquis of Lans- 
downe said that an English nobleman might live as 
handsomely and generously as became his rank, for 
5,0001. a-year. From the time that Mr, Pitt's financial 
operations began, the case became very different. 

There is on record the amount of a vast estate in the 
time of Charles I., which, according to my experience, 
is very surprising. It is that of iVilliam Cavendish^ 
Duke of JSew castle^ given by the Duchess, in the cu- 
rious Memoir which she published of the Dukes life. 
The rental amounts to tweiitj-iwo thousand pounds a- 
year, — Now it is supposed that, to bring this to the 
value of the present day, it must at least be multi- 
plied by eighty — and this would bring it to 178,0001. 
a-year 1 

I can, however, en the contrary, mention, from the. 
positive evidence of deeds, estates of 500 or 600 acres, 
which, in the year 1790, were sold for little more than 
the actual sum numerically for which they had been 
bought, temp. Char. I, •—and this, without any thing of 
local or accidental circumstances to account for it. 

It is observable, that the estates of new men, how- 
ever large they may be supposed to be, seldom go down 
to the third generation. Even when the purchaser dies, 
the property almost always comes to the hammer* The 

official documents, published a most Instructive and inge- 
nious pamphlet on the Income tax, in t^ hich he endeavoured 
to set right the loose and stupid opioions entertained of ia- 
dividual wealth. 



55 

estates of Barwell, Sir Thomas Riimbold, Sir Francis 
Sykes, Paul Benfield, and an hundred others might be 
named. The predictions of the do^Ynfall of those who 
fed on ahhej-lajids have been not a little falsified : no 
estates have kept so full, and lasted so long, as those of 
Russell and Cavendish I 

All the common conversation of mixed society is ne- 
cessarily loose ; but there is no subject on which there 
is so little precision and approximation to the truth, as 
on the amount of private fortunes, and the extent of 
rentals. Every thing is seen through a monstrous mag- 
nifying-glass ; and every one seems to think that \i\% 
own familiarity with wealth will be estimated by the 
light manner in which he talks of thousands and tens 
of thousands. If it be asked, " is such an one rich?' 
— " Oh no'' — it is answered — " a mere competence 
for a country-gentleman — about ten or twelve thousand 
pounds a-year !"' 

I have heard it remarked, that we often meet with 
persons of genius, of wit, of talents, of learning, of ac- 
comphshmenls, of taste — but rarely with persons of 
sound, intelligent, sagacious sense ; of those quiet, chas- 
tised, correct, sagacious, yet natural and lively concep - 
tions and judgments, wdiich gratify without fatiguing 
the hearer; which are all serenity of light ; which win 
their way imperceptibly, and produce assent without 
a struggle. Almost all conversation is the eruption of 
ambition and vanity : that is said which the talker sup- 
poses will recommend him; — not what he thinks; 
J3ut he seldom has a judgment sufficiently i^ational and 
experienced to make a good choice. 

People, for the most part, talk as authors generally 
write books, merely to gain notice — unless the simili- 
tude to authors be now changed, inasmuch as authors 
now write principally for money ; — and that is far 
meaner than the vain desire of distinction. — To write 
for money* must debase the mind: because then an 

* Every one knows that the price paid Milton for his 
Paro^Uso Lost was fifteen pounds, and that only contingent 



56 

author becomes a slave to the opinions of the mob, and 
to the popular taste. Now, if wisdom be the result of 
tigh talents highly and continually exercised in the 
pursuit of general truths, the opinions and taste of the 
mob cannot be right. 

John Langhorne first drew the notice to Collinses 
Odes by an article in the Monthly Review, about ten 
years after the poet's death ; and twenty years after the 
publication of these exquisite poems. At this time, all 
the rage was for ChurchiW s coarse and libellous Sa- 
tires. I think there is no doubt that Gray owed some 
images in his Elegy to Collins s Ode to Evening — an 
cde which, in its class, has never been equalled. Col- 
lins was one of those divine spirits which are all essence 
of poetry. 

And surely nothing, which has ever been said elo- 
quently and discriminately in praise of genuine and 
high poetry, can he. too enthusiastic. It is its business 
to carry us into a visionary and more beautiful world ; 
— according with our desires rather than with our ex- 
perience. I endearour to impress the necessity of this 
inventwe quality in all the criticisms I write ; and I 
am reproached that I am only inculcating what every 
one knows and admits. But, if it is so known and 
admitted, why are not the poetical works, which now 
come forth, tried by it; and why is not judgment pro- 
nounced accordingly? I find nothing of this in the 
major part of our popular poetry ; I find no great and 
affecting truths embodied and set forth in an interest- 
ing and natural fiction ; I find no noble and unaffected 
characters in conflict upon the tempestuous sea of life ! 
I find, instead, a glittering simile, or tinsel metaphor; a 
puling, sickly sentiment ; or a passionate and burning 
tear! all brought out in the most polished forms of 
fashionable slang ! golden goods, no doubt; — and of 
great demand in the market ! So once were Du Bartas 
and Marino^ and a thousand more, now forgotten ! 

on the sale of 4500 copies. The original contract has just 
been found, and printed. See Lit. Gaz, of20tli j^ug, 1825. 



57 

It may be said, that Miss Se WARD proved by her 
Louisa, that a novel in verse is but a bad tiling.— 
"Why ? because all Miss Seward's ideas of excellence lay 
in a florid style ; — not in bold invention of grand and 
natural characters ! Our old histories are full of inci- 
dents and hints for the most beautiful fiction. But 
perhaps the difficulty of filling them up is anticipated : 
it is easy to put together extravagant and improbable 
combinations ; but to pursue the course of nature ia 
her grand and affecting features is quite a different 
task ! To depend, not on surprise, but on force, is 
that for which few are qualified ! — Knowledge, experi- 
ence, wisdom, must unite with a rich imagination, 
and a familiarity with all the deeper and finer move- 
ments of the heart. A glowing morality of bosom 
and conscience ; an emulation of the magnificent 
desires, and profound regrets, that alternately rule the 
loftier endowments of our nature ; an habit of forming 
into shape, and putting into action, the possibilities of 
grand and propitious or tremendously afflicting cir- 
cumstances of some extraordinary fate, are the fountains 
of poetry ! 



21th August, 182SL 

It was not till yesterday that Major Pakry's Last 
Days of Lord Byron have come into my hands. I 
have this morning finished the perusal of them. In 
many important respects this volume furnishes informa- 
tion and proof of a very extraordinary natiu-e. How- 
ever highly I thought of Lord Byron before— and I 
have been severely blamed in many quarters for the 
aUedged extravagance of my praises — I now contemplate 
liim with still less qualified admiration. To appreciate 
Parry's testimony to the public viilues of his hero, we 
must keep in mind the quarter whence it comes. It 
is the evidence of a mere practical man, who was 
under no influence from the lustre of Lord Byron s 



58 

poetical genius. It may be said to Come from a j)ar^ 
iizan : but critical minds can distinguish between mere 
assertion, and that which bears intrinsic marks of 
ti^uth. 

In addition to all the interesting traits of Lord Byron, 
-which the author communicates, the intelligence re- 
garding Greece is full of weighty matter. Nor is the 
exposure of pretended patriots, and of money-jobbing 
committees, assuming the mark of public spirit and 
of a love of the liberties of mankind, less convincing, 
and less useful. The pitiful schemes of political 
quackery are here developed and broadly displayed in 
action : and the false media through which characters 
are conveyed to the world ; the chicanery with which 
the critical journals are made the instruments of party 
and personal misrepresentation and resentment, are 
liere made intelligible by such distinct instances, in 
persons and measures to which the public attention is 
naturally and easily drawn, — that the most prejudiced 
TPill not be able to deny their force. 

He, whose writings are adorned by sentiments of 
grand patriotism, has scarce ever had the opportunity 
and power, if he has had the sincere will, to confirm 
ihem by his actions. Lord Byron had the almost un- 
exampled glory of both. His views in favour of Greece 
Tsrere as practically wise, as they were enlarged and 
sublime : and the purity of his motives, his total free- 
dom from all selfish and private objects, can no longer 
be questioned even by the most base and most malig- 
uunt. No other man would have persevered as he 
did, under such discouragements, privations, suffer- 
ings, and dangers. 

The test of criticism to which Lord Byron has been 
esTposed, is very singular. None of the common allow- 
ances which candour makes for others, have been made 
for him; his private morals have been criminated with 
a severity quite unlike the usual modes of judging man- 
kind. There must have been some secret source of this 
iaappeasible malevolence : it cannot have arisen out of 
the actual and open facts of his life. I am aware of 



59 

all that may be said ia favour of what is called 
decency ;— that Lord Byron Avas not content to disre- 
gard some of the great moral and religious duties . that he 
made them subjects of his defiance and ridicule ! When 
I examine tlie characters of the mass of those ^vho 
repeat these charges, when I trace them to the lips 
from whence they spring, I become sure that they are 
neither sincere nor consistent ; and that they are the 
mere colour for hatred generated by other motives. 

It appears demonstrably from Parry's book, as I 
had before anticipated from various traits previously 
^nown to me, that one of Lord Byron s most prominent 
antipathies was hypocrisy. This hatred took early hold 
of his understanding as well as of his passions : and as 
it was his nature to be direct and violent, it may be 
admitted that he sometimes carried it too far; and 
that in his eagerness to expose deception and pretence, 
he occasionally tore away too much of the veil from 
life, and laid naked the deformities of nature loo 
rudely. There are some images with which to betray 
a continued fan; iliarity, does certainly argue a defect of 
moral taste. So it was, that for some reason or other, 
either of early associations, or native composition, 
Lord Byron was assuredly coarse} I have undertaken 
to speak frankly ; and on this point I must not conceal 
my opinion. Parry says, that he loved, and excelled 
ixi^ slaj2g, I had observed it before. This memorialist 
mentions it as a proof of his wonderful knowledge of 
life ; — and perhaps it is so : but it is knowledge in which 
he had better not have shewn himself apt. It is impossible 
sometimes not to smile at its drollery and wit, as ex- 
hibited in Don Juan; — but it also led him into those 
offensive passages in Don Juan which are its great blot, 
and which would damn for ever any inferior work ; — and 
yet, strange and bold as the assertion may seem, make 
the inimitable beauties of the nobler parts still more 
transcendently brilliant. What is the total amount of 
the passages which ought to have been expunged, I 
am not at this moment prepared to state : but I suspect 
it is not very large ;—and I would spare many passage* 



60 

"wliich are commonly condemned ; as not merely 
pardonable, but usefully satirical. 

In proof of coarseness^ I am told, on the direct autho- 
rity of those who have read them, that the destroyed 
memoirs were written in the coarsest style, and such as 
ought not to have seen the light. 

A selfish indulgence of his own fierce passions, regard- 
less of the consequences to others, is among the heavy 
charges made against Lord Byron. The latter days 
at least of the noble poet's life are a triumphant answer 
to this cruel attribute. During his expedition to 
Greece, 5^//^ was always most heroically sacrificed; — 
tlie safety and happiness of others, won by danger, 
watching, sacrifice of fortune, — and, at last, of life 
itself, was his only regard, and the tenor, course, and 
end of his actions 1 

If we put his splendid genius aside, '\i we give to 
the winds and waves all the magnificent memorials 
of poetical happiness, which he had written, — let us 
only take the last three or four months of his life, as 
related by Parry, an eye-witness, and a mere prac- 
tical, sensible, matter-of-fact man— 'incapable, in all 
respects, of inventing, or exaggerating ; — and what is 
the result ? The picture of an hero of the rarest 
magnanimity and lustre — illuminated by as rare wisdom 
— as considerate as grand — led on by the purest zeal 
for the independence and happiness of a suffering 
people;— magnificent in his conceptions; sagacious and 
accurate in his details ; sparing of blood ; anxious to 
preserve the lives even of the enemy ; outwardly stern ; . 
inwardly melting with sensibility ; kind to those about 
him ; thwarted by treachery, yet forbearing ; deserted, 
and left in the breach, where he foresaw death, 
yet scorning to withdraw ; defrauded, }■ et still forgiv- 
ing, and unabated in his zeal for the cause in which he 
had embarked ; living on a crust, in a wretched apart- 
ment, in a wretched unwholesome town ; yet spending 
tens of thousands of his private fortune in a cause which 
was entitled to draw on public funds, Vvilh held from him 
through the violent intrigues of the basest treachery ! 



61 

Shewing by the corporeal maladies under wlucli he 
sunk, even in the vigour of life, how deep had been 
his internal anguish and self denial ; and dying, partly 
for want of medical skill, while the last exhalations 
that quivered on his lips were those of fondness for a 
wife who refused to be reconciled to him, and for a 
child who had been withheld from his embraces ! 

If this be a true portrait of the last four months of 
Lord Byron's life, is it not sufficiently meritorious to 
immortalize any man? Its veracity does not depend 
solely on the credit due to the narration of Mr. Parry. 
If the stated facts are false, Colonel Stanhope and the 
Greek committee can refute them : admit the facts, 
and the conclusions cannot be resisted. We now 
know one of the poisoned sources whence the attacks 
on Lord Byron s memory in the Public and Critical 
Journals came ! 

In this public capacity Lord Byron displayed a sub- 
limity of virtue and patriotic views, which cannot be 
clouded or questioned. With the private faults of him, 
whose great public virtues are acknowledged, it is com- 
monly agreed that we have nothing to do. But let U5 
combine them in Lord Byron's case ; — and ought not the 
former to be the index to the true character of the more 
doubtful parts of the latter? In private life, Lord Byron 
is accused of having been reckless of the happiness of 
others !'— It is impossible ! no man can change his na- 
ture at once : scrutinize Parry's relation of facts of Lord 
Byron's kindness to foes as well as to companions, and 
dependents at Missolonghi; consider the proofs he ex- 
hibits of deep and unaffected sensibility ; — and he, who 
can then say that Lord Byron wanted benevolence and 
excess of tender feeling, is one too obtuse or too malig- 
nant to be argued with ! 

Considering the turn which the attacks on the injured 
poet have taken ; considering the stories which bare 
been circulated about him, and the broad unsparing 
terms which have been used, it is a difficult thing to 
defend him without seeming to betray a relaxation of 
moral principle, and to admit, if not justify, a disre- 



62 

gard to those boundaries between virtue and vice, to 
which a perpetual and vigilant attention is necessary 
for the welfare of society. Whatever irregularities 
Lord Byron, in the impetuosity of youthful inexpe- 
rience, committed., he committed in the face of open 
day. He had something like Rousseau's insanity, of 
desiring to appear worse than he was ! He had some- 
thing like the vanity of shewing himself to the world 
in the character of a rake — a reprobate — and a devil! 
Yet I cannot satisfy myself that it was strictly vanity ! 
•—It was partly defiance : partly violence of passions, 
w^hich no early instruction had taught him to curb. 
But Parry utterly mistakes in ascribmg his self-indul- 
gences to the early luxuries of life ; and to his having 
been dandled in all the selfish gratifications of dissolv- 
ing aristocracy. Lord Byron s boyhood was the reverse 
of this ; and there is no part of his character which is 
seen more clearly in its causes than that which arose 
from the mortifications and embitterments of a child- 
hood past in neglect and obscurity, uncongenial to his 
high birth, future station, and native pride. It was 
this which, when he entered the school of Harrow, 
threw all that spleen and gloom on bis spirit and his 
in teller c, which so united to form at once the clouds 
and sjjlendour of his genius ! 

I believe nothing therefore of Lord Byron's vicious- 
ness of heart. I admit that open and unblushing irre- 
gularities might have as mischievous an effect on the 
public as if they proceeded from such radical vice. I 
arrived at Geneva 7th September, 1818, about eighteen 
months after Lord Byron had quitted it. I learned 
there nothing which could be authenticated against 
him, unless irregular hours, love of solitude, and eccen- 
tric habits. He received By sshe Shelley * and his wife 

• The manner in which the Quarterly Review criticised 
the works of Shelley and Lclgli Hunt, taking that crooked 
opportunity to criminate Lord Byron in a most mysterious 
?ind utterly unfounded manner, is a forcible iilurtratioo of 
what 1 have said in a former page. 



63 

under liis hospitable roof at Coligny, if tliat was a 
crime : — and as to female sociely, let it be remembered, 
that Lady Byron quitted hbn! — not he, her! 

As to the world, — the poet had sufficient reason to 
be discontented with it: it had not been kind or just to 
him. Whatever were the disputes between Lady Byron 
and him — (and it cannot fairly be omitted that all the 
known facts tend one way — and ought to be belieyed 
till counter-statements of credibility are made) — the 
public had no right to take the part they did ; and to 
pursue the afflicted sujBferer with their relentless cla- 
mours and atrocious fables ! Organized parties were 
against him : there was nothing which could be called a 
party for him ! The whole bands of Methodists — not 
one body—but numerous, powerful, and almost irresist- 
ible bodies — opened in full cry upon him! — The spirit 
of all his poetry, as well as character, was especially 
opposed to them, their principles, their systems, and 
their modes of action ! — The ladies naturally joined the 
enemy's columns ; and, if a tenth of the stories* circiH 
lated had been true, they were right ! 

It was the temper of Lord Byron — perhaps his fault 
-—perhaps his misfortune— to persevere in a real vice, 
in proportion as he was persecuted for it — and, more 
than this, even to encourage and exaggerate the belief 
of calumnies he abhorred and disdained. 

This is a singular inconsistency : but it did not end 
here. All this was the temper, the habit, the passion 
—of one — whose very heart was consumed by the in- 
tense desire of glorious distinction and honourable fame I 
Where he was encouraged in a great course of action ; 
where his principles and his aims were duly appre- 

* A Frenchman related to me a story he had heard of 
Lord B.'s mode of tormenting his wife, too ridiculous to be 
repeated ; and asked me in the most serious manner if it 
was not true? — I smiled : he told me an English Lady of 
distinction had communicated it to him as an undoubted 
fact within her own knowledge. I grew at last indignant : 
but I perceived that 1 could not shake hi* faith in the story. 



64 

dated, there waS no exertion, no sacrifice, which he 
would not make to deserve what was expected of him I 
Parry bears witness to this in his unwavering resolution 
to remain at Missolonghi, when death, — and when he 
seems to have had a clear presentiment that death — was 
the certain consequence ! 

From the age of twehe till this my sixty-third 
year, T have been accustomed to study — (above all 
other works) — books of biography : — and especially 
and most intensely those in which the secret feelings 
and movements of the heart are laid open. But I have 
never read any character, in which purity of public con- 
duct and grandeur of motive is more unequivocally dis- 
played^ than in every trait which Lord Byron exhibited 
at Missolonghi regarding the affairs of Greece. 

It may be said that he a little overcalculated his 
means, and the power of individual patriotism^, by em- 
barking in such an expedition without a better know- 
ledge of the people, their characters, and resources* 
I am not sure, if all the assistance promised him 
from England had been duly performed, that this 
scheme of liberation was within the cards. But I can- 
not admit that a proper sagacity ought necessarily to 
have foreseen the course afterwards held by the Greek 
Committee : When they embarked their capital, suc- 
cess became a matter of interest to them.* Lord By- 
ron could not rationally have anticipated, that a cause 
so taken up, and in which large sums were embarked, 
would have been sacrificed to make Greece a mere stage 
to play off Jeremy Bentham's theories of government, 
and Colonel Stanhope's plans of printing presses, news- 
papers, and Lancasterian schools. He could not have 
supposed, that where every thing must necessarily de- 
pend on united effort, all sorts of division were to be 

• Perhaps it will be retorted, that they had long since 
had the prudence to get rid of their own shares. It is not 
necessary to schemers that shares should long continue at a 
prem ium ; they are n jt such fools as to omit getting out^ as 
quick as they came in I 



65 

created, and every tiling was to be paralyzed, ratlier 
than miss the chance of forwarding these paltry, dirty, 
worse than nonsensical schemes : that any thing of such 
utter stultification should have been encouraged and 
patronised at home, as the practices of those who sought 
out Greece as the loop-hole, whence they might insult 
an3 calumniate, out of private passion, not only the 
Holy Alliance — (as it is called) — but our own Govern- 
ment in the Ionian Islands, at the moment when the 
only possible chance of establishing the independence 
of Greece depended on soothing and neutralizing the 
Cabinets of Europe — and more especially in avoiding 
to provoke power so very near to them as the Ionian 
Government. It is so utterly impossible that any agi- 
tator of such a plan could be so blind to its mischievous 
consequences to the cause in which he professed to have 
embark rH, that I cannot see how he could conceal from 
himself the consciousness of tbe leading motive for the 
hne he was pursuing. The Committee^ at any rate, 
were not within the influence of the fumes of private 
passion and personal ambition ! 

On Lord Byron's death, I foresaw that the English 
press would teem with misrepresentations of him : I 
said — the cowards will now come forward to insult 
the dead lion I But I knew too little of what had been 
going on in Greece, to look to it from that quarter ! I 
read the articles in the Magazines^ Rei^iews, etc. and 
clearly perceived a snake in the grass I but I knew 
not its exact position. There was a game to play 
sufficiently obvious considering the circumstances of the 
parties. The public were enough inclined to believe 
a priori that the poet could not be much of di practical 
statesman^ that he loved to make a noise — loved his 
own passions and his own Avhims — and that after all 
he was a tyrant and a despot— and, however he might 
profess liberal principles of politics by way of adding 
attractions to a popular poem — that he was in heart 
nothing but a prejudiced and bigoted aristocrat HI 

Out therefore came the various portraits, memorials, 
anecdotes, comments, - -all sounding upon this chord, 



66 

*^ He was hut the proud noble'" — ^'^ lie ne^er forgot 
that he was Lord Byron' — " he had been spoiled by 
education and fashion^' — '-^ he had no solid and en^ 
lightened ^iews of policy'"' — '-^ he had no powers of 
argument and reasoning''' — " he did not see things 
with a philosophical mind ;"■—." he was against a free 
press ^^ — " against education^' — " in shorty he wished 
to keep the Greeks just as much slaves as before — 
only to be ruled by himself^ instead of being ruled by 
the Grand Turk r 

''Ah!" cry the mob of readers, "now the truth 
comes out : we were sure a man with a coronet could 
never really love freedom !'' " Ah !" cry the tories, 
*' this is glorious, to have the fellow unmasked at last!" 
'* Ahl" cry the methodists, rubbing their hands in 
triumph, '' see how he is given up by the liberals, who 
we were afraid wonld have held fast by Lim ! Don t 
you observe liow it comes from the Greek party them- 
selves 1 this \^ excellent ! there lay our danger : we 
Lad some reason to fear that his connection with the 
Greek cause would have rendered this unholy poet un- 
assailable !" — " Ah!" cried the gossiping lovers of de- 
traction, '' I enjoy this; — I enjoy it with all my 
heart ! see what it is to hear an unvarnished story I 
this comes from those who knew the man 1 He for 
the people Indeed ! he a patriot I he an hero ! why, he 
Lad no philosophic ideas of liberty ; his head was only 
full of high-sounding scraps of poetry; he laughed at 
Jeremy Bentham ; and did all he could to shut out 
knowledge from the people ; and to bully Colonel Stan- 
Lope, till the Colonel, with as much firmness as 
temper, lowered his crest, by telling him he was in 
heart no better himself than a TurkV 

But what if all these things came from the Greek 
Committee themselves, by their secretaries, their 
authors, their travellers, their missionaries, and their 
Benthamites I — So goes the world : — or at least so goes 
the present literary world. He, who is not connected 
with some of these media of conveying his opinions, is 
now shut out from any influence on the opinions pf 



67 

society : one or oilier of tliese bodies have got posses- 
sion of all purchasers. Every reader attaches himself 
to one or other of them ; and that body makes demands 
on him, equal to the whole which he can expend in 
reading. Every reader is a dottrel to his party : — he 
is its absolute mechanical and unresisting slave. 

How often do we take up books, which are said to 
have a great sale : we look at them : we persevere 
sufficiently to see their nature and quality : we cry, 
" how is it possible that this book, which has not a 
single literary merit of any kind, can have been success-^ 
ful? It is dull, trite, vulgar, unskilfully put together, 
made up of matter trifling in itself — and grossly inaccu- 
rate into the bargain !'' Then we come to this conclu- 
sion: " it must therefore contain something, though we 
have not hit upon it, which forwards the yiew of 
some party /" 

It is often urged, that though ex-parte productions 
might mislead, yet the freedom of the press, by forcing 
forward the other side, elicits the truth. I perceive no 
such effect : ihp mass of the people only read on their 
own side of the question. But if they do read on both 
sides, and it makes any impression at all on them, 
the eflfect is confusion, and an utter abandonment of 
any fixed opinion. The conflicting opinions of the 
numerous reviews now published do not set up those 
whom others have unjustly thrown down ; but have 
produced a general disesteem to authors ; have involved 
them in one common neglect, — the good and the bad ; 
*— and have made them adopt an opinion gratify- 
ing to their own self-regard, that there is no such thing 
as definite and certain excellence in literary com- 
position; and that w^th a little management one man 
has as good a chance of being exalted into the fame of a 
poet, or a moralist, as another. 

It has been already observed that all the prejudices 
and passions of the world were enrolled against Lord 
Byrou. It will then perhaps be asked, how, consis- 
tently with my principles, his poetry could be received 
with such eagerness, and command such an unexampled 



68 

Sale? — 'It requires some very nice distinctions and 
qualifications, to account for it. If the better parts of 
Lord Byron's poetry had been the cause of this 
popularity, the case would go far to overturn my 
theory. But I contend, confidently, that they were 
not so. Lord Byron's first poetical success had in a 
great degree an adventitious foundation. The English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers had little other merit 
than its justice, — the admitted provocation — its courage 
—-its personalities — and the attack on men, who had 
given great offence, but to whom others hitherto sub- 
mitted through fear. It was indeed the satire of a 
vigorous mind; and this made a double impression, 
when it came from a young nobleman immersed in 
dissipation ; and whom his attackers had represented as 
a feeble coxcomb ! Then, after an interval of two 
years, — and those years spent in foreign travel 
through countries little frequented by English tourists 
— in which a spirit of romantic adventure had already 
gained for it a sort of celebrity, which had set public 
curiosity a tip-toe, — came the two first cantos of Childe 
Harold, brought into the world by Mr. Murray^ 
with ail the management and skill of publication for 
which he is so remarkable — not in broad puffs, like 
Mr, Colhourne — but insinuating, mysterious, sagacious, 
and piquant — aided by a popular review—- and hailed 
by the nods and smiles of its no t-qf ten-smiling editor ! 
The train was laid — the poem came out— the flame 
caught in a moment I 

There are fine passages in these cantos ; — and es- 
pecially such as one would not have expected from the 
supposed habits and reported character of Lord Byron. 
But surely a great portion of these two cantos, if ex- 
amined by positive and not relative standards, is not 
^nuch above mediocrity. 

The success however of this poem served to plunge 
Lord Byron entirely, for two or three years, into what 
is called the fashionable w^orld of London I Success 
and encouragemenl were necessary to open and fan into 
flame tliis wonderful mans deep-buried genius : but 



69 

not exactly such success : for it at least brought as 
much evil as good. Next came two or three poems, 
generated in the hot-bed of corrupt literature : — 
the Giaour — the Bride of Abydos—Parisina^ etc. — 
in which there were a few splendid patches — but against 
Tvhich I must protest even as efforts of genius! In the 
Corsair the poet began for the first time to feel himself 
at home ; and to know his own strength ! 

The great and organized persecution arose out of the 
domestic misfortunes which drove Lord Byron abroad. 
His poetical fame was ihen established; and could not 
be recalled or wiped out. In that stage, whatever 
made him more talked of — for good or for bad — aided 
the circulation of his works. 

The difficulty is, first to ^\x public attention: when 
once engaged, the force and singularity of Lord Byron's 
mind, whether approved or not, would never let it 
relax. It was in Switzerland that he began first to 
sound his genius to its depths. In the beautiful cam- 
pagne of Coligny^ overlooking the broad expanse of 
the Genevan lake, and terminating its view by the Jura 
mountains, he gave himself up to meditation, to self- 
examination, and to regrets gilded and pierced by the 
glorious sun of poetical magic. The character of his 
mind first came fairly out in the thihd canto of Ghilde 
Harold. He spent half his time on the water; and 
liked it best when it was most tempestuous. It \% suf- 
ficiently demonstrative that at this time he drew a 
great deal from the fountain of TVordswortJis poetry : * 
sometimes he almost used his very words. I must con- 
fess therefore that the indulgence of future, frequent, 
I may add ungentlemanly spleen against his master, is 
not easily to be excused. 

The identification of almost all Lord Byron's poems 

* Shelley is evidence of the fact. At this time Shelley 
had gained a strange influence over Lord Byron's mind. 
Shelley has written two or three short things {posthumous}^ 
•which have a delicate beauty: on the whole his poetry is 
fantastic, corrupt, and forced*. 



70 

wuli liis own character has been made a ground of 
censure, very conimonly assented to.— »To me this 
is one of their very extraordinary attractions. It gives 
them a sincerity, a certainty, a vivacity, which scarcely 
any other poems possess. It is said that he is not like 
Shakespeare : he cannot throw himself into every 
variety of shape ; represent every course of passion i 
or develop every diversity of thought produced by 
nature or by circumstances : it is still one and the same 
gloomy mind throwing forth its gloom and its passions ; 
its hatreds; its scorns; and its raptures ! 

The remark is mainly true. There is this unity in 
almost all Lord Byron's best poems :> — not, however, 
in Do7i Juajil — It is not attempted to compare Lord 
Byron with Shakespeare! — But this unity has its ad- 
vantages as w^el] as disadvantages. However powerful 
and rich imagination may be, it can never quite equal 
the force of actual and personal experience in those 
who are endowed with the highest degree of feeling, 
passion, and intellectual splendour I 

Nature had endowed Lord Byron with gifts of such 
singular force, w illi feelings of such intensity and such 
splendour, and the chances of life had brought them 
into full play under circumstances of such extraordi- 
nary interest, that I doubt if mere invention could 
£ver have produced any thing equally striking and 
equally just ! The disclosure of the internal move- 
ments of such a mind is read with a breathless interest. 
It has all the brilliance of fiction, and all the solidity 
of fact ! Lord Byron's life was poetry ; and his verses 
are but its mirror! 

■' It is a mystery of our nature, that whatever internal 
feelings violently haunt us, we feel relieved by com- 
municating, and gaining sympathy for them. When 
those feelings are of a poetical character, and are thus 
communicated in adequate language, the fruit I believe 
never fails to be true and standard poetry. This is not 
contrary to the quality of invention, on which I have 
always insisted. Those feelings are generally pro- 
duced by the created presentiments of a visionary mind. 



71 

Lord Byron carried It even to an liigli degree of super- 
stition/ as he frankly acknowledged to Parry. 

What fatigues me in ordinary poets is their artificial 
and affected invention : they represent a set of sickly 
sentiments and images, which are not only diflferent 
from life ; but more insipid than life : — states of mind, 
which neither themselves, nor any one else ever ex- 
perienced ; and which it V70uld be a degradation, if 
they did experience. Then we meet with these authors^ 
and find them men of the world, conversant with its 
modes, favourites in its fashionable societies ; pleasant 
companions, and putting a full value on conformity to 
its habits.— And why should they not be ? What they 
write is no part of their character : a tone merely as- 
sumed ; — nothing but a piece of dull and laboured me- 
chanism, — fineer work ; and flowers of coloured paper ; 
— and gold-leaf ! Pope could see the distinction, when 
he spoke of Cowley ! 

*' Forgot his Epic, nay his Lyric art. 

Yet still we love the language of the HEAaxi" 

Nothing can be more true than the lines so often cited 
from Horace :— 

- Mediocrihus esse poetis. 



rfon Dii, non homines, non concessere columnje. 

Of all dull reading, mediocre poetry is the dullest, I 
can no longer read even Akenside : he is a wordy de- 
claimer; — and so Gray always thought. In all Shen- 
stone there is but one elegy worth preserving — the elegy 
on Jessy. — Goldsmith has a few good lines in his 7>«- 
peller : but I strongly suspect that they were every one 
of them those which were furnished by Johnson, I never 
relished Young s ISight Thoughts^'*' even in my ad-^ 
miring days ; they have much smoke, and little fire. 

All Lord Byron's noblest poems have reference 
to life ; only in cases extraordinarily circumstanced, 

* I ought to he prejudiced in their favour; for he was a 
Iriend of my grandfather. 



72 

and of Tiolenl and grand excitement : — I mean life as 
it appeared to Lord Byron — not as it appears to a com- 
mon mind. And thus I dare to bring his magnificent 
poem of Manfred within this character.* — " But," it 
will be answered, " surely not Cain; nor Hea\?en and 
Earth I'' '■' Yes," I reply, '' Cain — and Heaven and 
Earth ! — but I have not now space to argue the 
question ! " 

Lord Byron had an ardent and un extinguish able love 
of distinction and glory — and that which consecrated 
this love as a virtue was, that he placed it principally 
on the merit of cultivated genius — and of public benefits 
conferred on an enslaved people; — on dedicating to 
their deliverance his strenuous exertions, his fortune, 
and his life ! 

But I must not omit to say, that he did not always 
hold this high career ; — that, to shew the inconsistencies 
and the weaknesses of human nature, he had also his 
petty ambitions : — 

^' Born with the gifts to win the good and wise. 
Women and fools must praise him, or he dies !** 

He could not bear not to be thought a man of the world 
as well as a poet :* and he delighted to talk slang with 
coarse and sensual rakes; and contend in audacious spe- 
culations with hard-headed free-thinkers. 

He was proud of his descent ; and he had reason to 
be proud of it. And here I must correct an erroneous 
construction which has been given to a passage in my 
Letters on Lord Byron^ published in Jidj, 1824. It 
has been understood that I spoke equivocally of his 
right to be classed among the old nol3ility. I meant 
nothing like such a doubt. Lord Byron was of one of 
those few families whose male ancestors held the rank 
of peerage before tlie close of Henry the Third's reign. 
But that peerage had long expired among females : the 
male peerage inherited by Lord Byron was created by 

* Even so plain and unlettered a man as Parry was struck 
Yrith this. 



73 

Charles I. Now I had long ago ventured to lay down 
the line of separation between the old and modern no- 
bility at the death of Queen Elizabeth. How, therefore, 
could I, consistently with myself, call the peerage^ of 
which the poet was himself in possession, positively 
old? — But still he was the male descendant of one of 
the oldest classes of our nobility. It is not likely 
that I should mean to degrade persons from whom I 
descend : for I am proud to shew among my quarter- 
ings the arms of an elder brother of Lord Bjrons an- 
cestor I 

I have thus been accidentally impelled to give an un- 
proportional length to the discussion of the character of 
Lord Byron, on which I had already amply treated in 
other publications; but it must be recollected that other 
documents have been since laid before the public by 
different persons who had the opportunity of personal 
l<nowledge : and therefore I have thought il desirable to 
express the opinion I hold subsequent to the appearance 
of these new lights. It is true that we have still to ex- 
pect the Life by Moore ^ who had many opportunities of 
judging^ peculiar to himself. But the concurrence of 
testimony, which we already have from various uncon- 
nected quarters, can scarcely err. 

There was something so very rare in Lord Byron's 
genius, and in all the circumstances connected with his 
life, that the subject cannot well be exhausted, nor soon 
become fatiguing to rational curiosity. As to Mai^ro^ 
cordato, the Greek chief on whom he fixed his faith, 
he seems to have been the best who could have been 
chosen.* 

There are many characteristics of English and French 
literature extremely unlike : and I have been a little 
astonished at the popularity of Lord Byron's poetry in 
France; for I must confess that it seems to me that 

* I remember Mavrocordato at Geneva, in the winter 
1818 — 4819, "when he first escaped from ttie Turkish power. 
He was a large handsome man, apparently between forty 
«nd fifty; and seemed iiii^lined to mix in Genevan society. 

E 



74 

there is no part of literature in which the French so 
little excel, as in poetry. In historic memoirs and bio- 
graphy, they are always amusing, often beautiful, some- 
times profound. I speak of the past ages : their very 
modern books do not seem to me equally to deserve this 
'praise. The earlier productions, however, oi Madame 
de Genlis deserve it. 

The Memoirs of Herself, of which the fifth and sixth 
volumes have just appeared, must be read with due at- 
lowances for the garrulity of a great age. I confess that 
they so far disappointed me, when I took up the first 
volume, that I have not yet had the perseverance to go 
through them. Yet it is impossible not to be astonished at 
her industry, her acquirements, the quickness and inge- 
nuity of her talents, the extent of her inquiries,, her ler- 
tility of incident, and copiousness of observation and re- 
flection, a certain sort of good sense and practical conse- 
deration in her theories, and a clearness, vivacity, and 
elegance of style, which belongs to a former age. But 
this applies more to her precedent works than to her 
Memoirs, which have struck me as of too slight a tex- 
ture^ and too full of frivolities and ceremonials. Yet 
there is something amusing, if not satisfactory, in the 
array of so many literary names : and Madame de Genlis 
has filled too important a part in the literature of the 
last fifty years to be dismissed without mature consi- 
deration. I reserve therefore my final opinion till I 
have read the Memoirs more fully, and with more 
care.* Madame de Genlis's criticism on Madame de 
Stael is severe, but just. In many of her remarks on 
the literature of Yoltaire's age she shews a pure and 
classical judgment. The fault, I think, of her genius 
is, that she wants intensity and profundity ; — that she 
has neither deep feeling nor high imagination. With 
all her good sense, she has not the art of carrying the 

* Two or three anecdotes of ihe conduct of French 
Reviewers to Mad. de G. especially of il/ons.JHb/Tman, in the 
Journal dcs Debats^ shew that these things are conducted in 
France exactly as in England. 



95 

I'eader away with lier; nor of ensuring his confidence. 
To create enthusiasts, the writer must be an enthusiast. 
She prides herself on her Romance on Petrarch :^t is 
a complete failure ^she certainly must have been utterly 
ignorant of the character of her own powers when she 
undertook that subject. The French genius, and espe- 
cially that of Madame de Genlis, has no congeniality 
with that of Petrarch. A good life of Petrarch is yet 
a desideratum in literature, notwithstanding all which 
has been done by Abbe de Sade^ — an amusing book, 
written by an industrious man, of feeble powers ! 

Madame de Genlis has been in the habit of writing 
works, consisting of half histor3^_, half fiction. I con- 
sider this a very dangerous sort of composition : it is 
scarcely possible to preserve the due limits in such an 
union : and if it makes any impression on the reader, 
it will inevitably confound in his memory what is fact 
with what is imagined. It is quite a different thing to 
raise a whole imaginative structure on some obscure 
and undefined historic fact. Then the slovenly way of 
putting the word " historique'' in a note, instead of a 
particular reference, is detestable. Everything which is 
told by historians is not true ; we want the name of the 
author, that we may know what credit to give to him ; 
and the volume and page^ that we may verify, if we 
choose, the citation. Otherwise what check is there in 
that which the author has the whim to impose on us ? 

The delineation of character is one of the most at- 
tractive, and perhaps one of the most useful faculties of 
genius. Madame de Genlis sometimes exhibits it; but 
I doubt if she ever enters into the depths of the heart. 
She was rather formed to catch the traits of artificial 
society : she has touched the character of Madame du 
Deffand with a hght but admirable hand: — I wish she 
had entered with more consideration into that of Rous- 
seau^ instead of telling us two or three petty anecdotes. 
I have long learned to guard myself against anecdotes: 

* This book is novv scarce in Italy, and I believe noi 
common even in France. 



76 

while they seem to let us behind the curtain, they only 
fcetray some moment of casual and passing folly, — even 
|f true. And what a temptation do they hold out to 
Bistort, paint, exaggerate, and invent? 

We have some English authors who partake some- 
thing of the school of Madame de Genlis ; such as Miss 
Edgeworth: but they have not her liveliness, her ge- 
nius, nor her literature. A trite, dull, moral lesson, 
taught in the shape of a technical fiction, is time con- 
sumed in reading, which, while it is all labour un- 
mixed with pleasure, produces no fruit. Such authors^ 
however, if they will not be read by posterity, have at 
least a more solid reward — the money in hand 1 1 They, 
who write for lucre, must necessarily write for the dull 
and ignorant ! 

It may be said, that he who will bend to the world in 
nothing; who wall obstinately and without qualification 
follow his own personal tastes, caprices, and whims, 
who expects that the reader should bring with him all 
the knowledge of which he himself may be, perhaps 
cccidentallj ^ the master; who will take no pains to 
gupply abruptnesses, and open what, if trite to himself, 
may be new to others, deserves the neglect with which 
he may be treated : that what is for sale must be fitted 
for the market : that the wine-merchant could not sell 
ihe genuine unmixed produce of the vineyard if he 
would — because it is not suited to the public palate ; 
and that nine-tenths of the people prefer the marks of 
the artificer s technical skill to the intrinsic worth of 
the material I 

The nature of a newspaper was always understood, 
in former days, as clearly distinguished from literary 
productions : it was addressed to the people ; and there- 
fore was, in the very essence of its composition, framed 
•with other views, and in another taste. Now the mass 
of books is written on the principles on which news- 
papers alone were formerly written. Newspapers have 
not risen to the rank of literature ; but literature has 
fallen to the rank of newspapers. I remember once 
remonstrating with the editor of a country newspaper 



77 

— ^a very clever man — as to the use of a certain trite 
and inaccurate phraseology, which would have been 
easily mended: " Sir," said he, " I am aware of it: 
but we are obliged to use the terms with which our 
customers are familiar, or we should not sell our Jour- 
nal!" 

I anticipate the answer which will be given me : — 
* ' Are not some of the ablest of our popular authors at 
present principal writers in newspapers, as well as in 
literary journals?"— I admit it: but this demonstrates^ 
not refutes, the justice of ray complaints. They must 
write to please^ not to teach I No one will now be 
taught : all claim the right to think for themselves. 
But will not a bad reason prevail more with a dull or 
ignorant man, than a good one? 

There is a bastard sort of philosophy abroad in the 
world, which tries every thing in life, in politics, in 
morals, and in Hterature, by the artificial square of a 
sort of Scotch reasoning, without due regard to the 
complicated nature of man s being ; to his passions ; 
his imagination ; his intuitive tendencies and predilec- 
tions. The inductions are made from narrow premises, 
when truth can only be derived from broad ones. 

Authors are now of a very different rank in talent 
and acquirement than formerly : the number of frivo- 
lous and charlatanical publications increases every year: 
the number of solid ones decreases still more rapidly. 
Were the subjects of important discussion ; were the 
settled facts, which it is desirable to know, — exhausted, 
this might be endured with less regret. But k is the 
contrary : as the world goes on, the fields of enquiry, 
and the materials to be brought forward, multiply. It 
is therefore still more to be regretted, that the means 
should be thus wasted. There are topics enough of 
solid knowledge and erudition to employ all the presses, 
and exhaust all the money w^hich can be spared for the 
purchase of books. Facts well chosen, well argued, 
well arranged, well expressed, require great talents and 
great industry. 

The duties of literature are sufficiently obvious. Iti 



78 • 

businei^s is to bring forth or illustrate important truths^ 
■which are new, or not commonly understood. And 
let it not be supposed that this excludes imagina- 
tion : it calls from it its highest and best-directed ef- 
forts, The public may be amused for a moment by the 
mere relation of common facts, which have novelty ; 
or the passing application of common opinions to the 
occurrences of the day : but such manufactures are 
never recurred to. Of all classes of books, there is 
perhaps most of this in what are called Travels^ Tours ^ 
and Voyages, They scarcely ever contain a standard 
sentence; — a sentence which can afterwards be cited. 
They come for the most part from persons of small 
talents and acquirements, incapable of curious discri- 
mination or solid observation, who merely see the ve- 
riest surface of things with a common and careless eye ; 
and relate in ordinary language, mixed up with patches 
of tumid pretension furnished by an hired editor, what 
is egualiy open to every stranger, even every child of 
twelve years old, who passes over the same foreign 
ground—whether posting by voituriers, or by ihe pub- 
lic diligence. Yet these are favourite books for the 
moment; and are, many of them, a good deal puffed 
by the Journals which call themselves Literary. How 
can it be, that many of these penmen, dubbing them- 
selves authors, can write works really fit for publica- 
tion? Many of them are stupid by nature; have had 
a neglected education ; have had neither a taste for 
books, nor an opportunity of consulting them ; have 
been adtnitted into no society, except what is common 
to all ; and have seen nothing but what every courier 
sees twenty times in a year. If we should pay no at- 
tention to the gossip of these people regarding the 
common concerns of life occurring at home, bow does 
the act of having travelled over the high roads of 
France, Switzerland, Italy, or Germany, invest them 
with new powers? 

The truth is, that even a man of great talent, richly 
cultivated, and of quick observation, learns but little 
from the mere surface of foreign travel. The first 



79 

impression of a place is commonly deceitful . We can 
form no sound judgment from a residence much shorter 
than six months, — except as to the mere description 
of scenery; — and even there, mere novelty sometimes 
gives undue force. In every country in which I have 
resided on tlie Continent, my last impression has been 
different from my first. 

I feel with regard to literature that to which very 
few will give their assent. It offends the popular pre- 
judice : — a prejudice which all the literary journals 
of the present century have done their utmost to 
strengthen. I thmk that the character of an author 
should not be lightly taken up ; and that it requires 
native gifts, peculiar both in kind and degree, in addi- 
tion to acquirements of great labour, skill, and care. 

I do not deny that there are some subordinate de- 
partments of useful book-making, which may be per- 
formed by mere labour, with very moderate talents. 
But the place due to this class of pioneers is very well 
understood; and is not the class on whom the dispute 
turns. 

Abilities are common; genius is rare. We meet every 
day with those w^ho apprehend with quickness, and 
apply with judgment. This perhaps is sufficient for the 
due treatment of temporary topics. But it is not suffi- 
cient for the production of a standard work. Examine 
our ablest literary journals by this standard, and see 
what will be the result. It may be best done by a 
reference to the tables of matter in the combined in- 
dexes of a series of years. I have done so ; and could 
not hesitate in the conclusion to which I came. A 
general truth, of any novelty, and not borrowed, rarely 
occurs. 

I never yet saw, nor have read, any full and authentic 
account of any one of great literary genius, who had 
not intense sensibility, — or who was entire master of 
himself. Enthusiasm is an indispensable ingredient; — 
and the spirit will sometimes take possession of persons 
so gifted ! He, therefore, who can absolutely accommo- 
date himself to the petty manners of the world, gives a 



80 

proof that he is not a great genius. He may assume 
the tone of deep pathos in his writings; — but it is all 
factitious. The great proof of littleness is servihty ; 
courting the fashionable, and living with the gay! I 
always admired Smollet's Ode to Independence, It 
was a burst of genius ! 

*^ Thy spirit, Independence, let me share. 
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye I" etc. 

At any rate, if a man of mean birth and low fortunes 
lives with rank and title, he cannot live on equal terms ; 
and we know enough of these latter to know that they 
will require obeisance in return for favour ! Even the 
generous Lord Byron tauci^ht people that he would 
not always bear equality ! Gray, who was honourably 
proud, as well as fastidious, would never expose him- 
self to the insolence of rank. I have seen men, in- 
deed, whom the public has honoured with the name 
of genius, making themselves the monkeys of new earls 
and lucky countesses, and, in return, getting their 
poetry puffed as divine ! bui it was the divinity of the 
milliner, the flower-maker, and the jeweller ! I have 
seen men also, who, by the aid of checks written on 
satin paper dipped in rose-water, and edged with Cu- 
pids and weeping Yenuses, boasted of being all the 
rage of upstart coronets, and ambitious, though faded, 
beauties of fashion ! How delighlful it must be to live 
couched and dandled in the very inmost shrine of the 
most artificial and debilitating luxury. — sighing out in 
the most plaintive and tender voice : — '''-I am a patriot: 
I love the hardy mob ; — and would die for the libera 
ties of the people '" 

All those feelings, which go rather to weaken than 
to strengthen the mind, all those sickly pretensions to 
sentiment, which are only fit for the effeminate, and 
the dealers in false and simulated refinement, are worse 
than the mere hard fruits of the head untouched by the 
heart. If they have any sort of claim to genius, it is 
a bastard genius, which is entilled to no inheritance : 



81 

•—and it has all the corruption, without any of the 
rigour, of bastardy. 

It may be said, that the wild flights of what I deno- 
minate true genius, have as little solidity, and are as 
little serviceable to the practical duties of life : nay, 
that they withdraw, exhaust, and derange the mind. — 
The charge is not true : they encourage the mightier 
enterprises of grand spirits : and they sometimes rouse 
even the sluggish and the dull. 

I am aware that I have ah^eady, on many occasions, 
endeavoured to enforce this opinion: but it seems to 
me to be so very important, that it is better to run the 
chance of being reproached for tautology than to omit 
it. There is nothing unnatural in the most brilliant, 
most extraordinary, and most visionary flights of Shak- 
speare : they may not in all cases be such as reason 
and experience admit ; but they are such as an excited 
imagination gives credence to : — even the very Fairy 
scenes of the Midsummer Night's Dream, which are all 
founded on popular superstitions ! Great genius there- 
fore is always in earnest : it knows nothing of techni- 
cal creations ; of a poetical world different from a real 
world ; of feelings assumed for poetry, yet inconsistent 
with life ; — of sentiments, delicacies, and refine- 
ments, unlike what the author himself, or any one else, 
has ever felt, yet set up as proper for poetical repre-^ 
sentation. 

Such unmanly delusive affectations bring poetry into 
contempt, and sink it down into the rank of an art 
calculated only to mislead. The true poet paints what 
hard experience will seldom justify; but he paints what 
a passionate and noble mind, in a state of high in- 
tellectual emotion, expects and believes ; he describes 
things, not perhaps as they are, but as they appear to 
him under the temperament to which he has been 
raised. 

All writers of artificial poetry are cold-blooded, cold- 
hearted men, who substitute mechanism for inspira- 
tion; and who, therefore, always mistake extravagance 
for grandeur or beauty. It U as much the business of 

E2 



82 

the poet to be true to nature and actual existences, as 
it is of the philosopher — 

'^ Awake and faithful to its wonted fires." 

But there are those who prefer the painted tints on 
the fine lady's cheek to the rosy hues of a peasant girl; 
and the manufactured green of a drawing-room to the 
yerdure of " odious y odious trees .'" 

When I call for high flights of imagination, for de- 
lineations of the more beautiful world which the poet 
creates for himself, for a state of intense feeling not 
congenial to the coarse habits of common life, I am 
not, as some will suppose, inconsistent with my own 
theory; I call for nothing which is contrary to that 
which I have just insisted on. That which I proscribe 
is not natural either in society or in solitude: we no 
2nore feel, or believe it, when alone^ than in the bustle 
of company : it is a mere pretence, which no more re- 

E resents what has actual dominion over the mind and 
eart, than gold leaf represents the solid golden ore. 
We may " hope, though hope be lost," and believe 
against reason : but we must not put forth, not only 
what reason rejects, but what unforced imagination 
never suggests ; what the imagination as little confides 
in as the reason ! It is the poet's business to embody 
all the more magnificent and more affecting phenomena 
of our intellectual nature : but it is as false in poetry as 
in science, to invent and miscolour phsenomena ! That 
which cannot be read and approved by the soundest 
and strongest understanding is not genuine : — if it can- 
not be read in our most sober moments, in those when 
we are seeking wisdom, it is not genuine! It will be 
asked, " How is this consistent with your praise of 
Don Juan?'' I answer — " perfectly consistent ! Don 
Juan abounds in objectionable passages: but it over- 
flows with knowledge of human life : not only is the 
imagination exercised, and the heart touched by the 
interchange of exquisite decriptions and passages of 
intense feeling, while bursts of innocent humour bring 
a smile upon the most melancholy face ^ — but the under- 



8S 

Standing is continually surprised by a collision of fire, 
throwing forth blazes of the most profound and just 
remark." It is doubly to be lamented that the immortal 
poet sliould have thrown in so much dirty and offensive 
rubbish, because those are not the parts which haye the 
recommendation even of wit or acuteness. 

And here let me speak of one living author, who, be- 
cause he is one of our greatest poets, has been most 
abused. I do not agree with Wordsworth in all his 
poetical theories, nor in all the models which he has 
created for himself: — but his works are a great study. 
All the faculties of the mind are exercised in the pro- 
duction of his principal pieces. Intensity and origina- 
lity of thought characterize him ; and the reason as 
Avell as the imagination is instructed by the perusal of 
his compositions. They have the grand ingredient of 
earnestness, the actual visions of a retired, peculiar, 
and deeply-meditating imagination : the associations 
which the poet paints require a long discipline ; a 
studied bent; but they are conformable to its nature; 
and such as perpetual musing can produce in one of 
high gifts, high morals, and high attainments. Such 
emanations from a seer, who has spent his days on the 
bosom of lakes, amid the inspiring sounds of solitary- 
woods, and high mountains, are like a new spring of 
living water from the rock, throwing forth freshness 
and verdure, where all before was trodden and barren. 

In all these striking poems my great and most essen- 
tial principle is primarily exemplified. The poet and 
the man are always identified. I have not the happi- 
ness of more than a very slight personal acquaintance 
■with Wordsworth : but, since my residence abroad, 
some near members of my family have become so in- 
timate with him, as to enable me to bear direct testi- 
mony to his qualities in private as well as in public : 
and these w^ll crown his works, by the weight which 
they give to his sincerity. 

Wordsworth does not run after the Great; ply for 
the praises of reviews; write down to the taste of the 
mob for lucre ; nor, while he is setting forth the beau- 



84 

ties of nature, find enjoyment only m Crowded cities, 
in dinners, drawing-rooms, and theatres ! he unites phi- 
losophy with poetry ; and practises the stern and simple 
morals which he inculcates ! 

His Prefaces contain a fund of original inquiry into 
the nature of '' the shadowy tribes of mind i^ and he 
has executed his own theory with powerful genius. The 
objection I make is, that his associations are often such 
«s would not " come unsought V — are not the " invo^ 
luntary'' strains of which Milton speaks as those with 
which the Muse " visits him nightly." Mr. Words- 
worth admits that the associations can only be the re- 
sult of deep study, and long discipline of the head and 
heart. This is more than we can expect of the great 
body of mankind even in their most virtuous state : 
and I confess there seem to me already existing in 
the human intellect the traces of associations of suffi- 
cient grandeur and beauty, which only want rousing 
and bringing out! Still this deep poet's productions 
form an era in our poetical literature, and demand all 
the calm consideration which can be given to them. 
There is a mighty elevation of spirit in the serene si- 
lence with which he has borne the ribaldry of coarse 
and ungenerous criticism ! 

But I am wandering into wider fields than can be 
permitted to my purpose, I have been somewhat irri- 
tated into the publication of this Note ; and it has be- 
come necessary to shew that I have the command of 
matter which would have enabled me Xofulfdl what I 
had announced. These pages are made up of free and 
unborrowed opinions on topics of inquiry neither nar- 
row nor incurious. Trite thoughts, or the disburthen- 
ment of a full memory conversant with trifles, may 
easily supply endless food for the press : but unless I 
felt a calm conviction, that my running pen, however 
traduced, does not justly expose itself to the censure of 
such a character, it should rest untouched by me ! 

I have dedicated a long and unrewarded life to lite- 
rature. I began early ; and I have gone on through good 
and through evil report : and have been enabled to do 



85 

50, because I loved tlie pursuit Intensely for itself ; and 
not for its worldly advantages. I know that the way to 
be successful in life is to boast ; — and not to be queru- 
lous! — Mankind always shun the unfortunate ! My opi- 
nions are not formed in the fashion of the present day ; 
and I shall have the spirit and the clamorous or intriguing 
interests of very opposite organized bodies against me : 
— the tories, the wbigs, the liberals, the sectaries, the 
fashionable poets, the fashionable book-makers, and 
the fashionable critics ! Tremendous associations, Avho 
carry every thing by tactics, — and when tbey cannot 
succeed by reason, succeed by numbers I 

The value of opinions depends on complex causes ;— 
so complex, that we must be more severe and more 
abstract reasoners than the strongest-headed of man- 
kind ever are, to give our full credence to what is 
anonymous . Much must at last depend on authority 
and confidence : indeed, almost every sound and deep 
opinion is mixed up with something of feeling or intui- 
tive sense. 

There never was an age in which it was as neces- 
sary to be incessantly vigilant against sophistries as at 
present. The whole public press is employed in pro- 
mulgating, not matters of conscientious conviction, 
and sincere disinterested opinion, but matters in which 
the narrow interests of individuals or parties are set 
forth under the specious colours of what assumes to be 
general reasoning. Directories therefore, which are 
above suspicion, or against which we know where to 
be guarded, are more than ever wanted. It matters 
not much in what form an author, who is worthy of 
being read, conveys his ideas; the essence of what he 
communicates will bear him out. But, alas ! not many 
authors are worth reading; — not one in one hundred 
and fifty adds an atom to human knowledge : — but 
original opinion, if it be just, is knowledge ; — and 
much more important knowledge than a new fact. I 
have therefore, in this brochure^ attempted opinions 
raither than anecdotes ; though I know that the latter 
are much belter received by the public. An anecdote 



86 

is worth little after it becomes stale, if it ever tva!( 
worth any thing ; — which it seldom has been. Anecdotes 
are exceedingly deceitful, though they amuse for a mo- 
ment. There is a prying curiosity in our nature not 
founded in honourable feelings, which, if it may be 
excused, cannot be admired. I remember the intense 
curiosity with which the gossiping and perverted tales 
in Madame Piozzis Anecdotes of Johnson were read 
on their first publication ! How utterly are they now 
despised and forgotten ! 

If I should Uve through the ensuing winter, and be 
uninterrupted in my literary pursuits, it is my inten- 
tion to proceed in tlie Memoirs alluded to in the An^ 
nounceinent for which this Note apologises^ But I 
request that it may be understood that the Memoirs 
will be rather of public than private afiairs ; — sketches 
of public characters ; criticisms on successive objects 
of literary attention ; remarks on changing manners ; 
and comments on political measures : and especially 
on that dangerous feature of our aristocracy, which 
Count Segur (the father), in his Memoires^ has well 
expressed as preceding the French Revolution, p. 25 : 
'•''• Lancien usage laissait entre la noblesse et la bour- 
geoisie wi immense interi>alle^ que les talens seul les 
plus distingues franchissaient moins en realite qu'en 
APPARENCE : // J ai^ait plus de familiarite que d'ega- 
LITE." This was a great and disgusting feature, which 
I have long noticed in England; — especially during the 
six years that I sat in parliament: — a vulgar and un- 
ieeling forwardness on one side ; — a treacherous civi- 
lity on the other ! I could mention some very ludicrous 
instances where I happened, (without seeking,) to hear 
what was said — aside. 

Much the larger portion of my life has been spent 
in literary retirement : but for thirteen years, from the 
age of twenty-seven to that of forty, I was necessitated 
to lake an active part in a claim of peerage, v/hich, 
during that long period, was procrastinated by the 
vexatious and dilatory modes of proceeding of a Com- 
mittee oi the Lords' House ; — and there I had occasion 



87 

to see many public cliaraclers, — even to llie penetralia ; 
—to see of what talents great functionaries were made 
—in what manner and by what springs public business 
was conducted, and private rights were protected; what 
security there is in statutes ; and what is the value of 
the constituted laws of my country ! Above all, I 
learned to estimate the wisdom of our ancestors in the 
establishment of the law of trial by jury ! What is the 
law ; and where encroachments have been made ; and 
what is the consequence of those encroachments, I 
shall hereafter have occasion to shew! It is said, thai 
power is strong in England, but that the law is stronger ! 
I am afraid that I shall have occasion to shew ihai power 
is sometimes in this boasted country stronger than the 
law ! I think that I know enough of the law, and can 
construe it with sufficient accuracy, not to mistake its 
provisions, when they are in technical terms which are 
admitted by an unbroken stream of judicial definitions 
to have but one precise and fixed meaning ! 

Whether these, or any other arguments or opinions 
of mine, will be considered of any weight, it is not 
for me to indulge any anticipated confidence. I know 
v;hatl require m others, to give authority to opinion; 
but self-love renders a man an incompetent, because a 
too partial, estimator of his own powers. I know that 
weight is only due to the conclusions or sentiments of 
those who possess all the faculties of the mind : that 
imagination, feeling, native sagacity, reason, judgment, 
memory, are all necessary : — and that, added to these, 
there must be an independence of spirit, a disdain of 
mercenary or interested views, a frankness of temper, 
and an animating love of just fame. The pen, that is 
guided by one so endowed, will not write fruitlessly. 
Idle words will waste and dissolve, like the breath that 
gave birth to them. 

Should this Note attract any readers, difference of 
opinion ought not to bring any condemnation on it. 
It is by collision that the truth is often elicited. It is 
only necessary that there should be good faith, and 
genuine ingredients, in what is thus brought into con- 



88 

tact, I am aWare that I shall be often thought too 
severe ;— and sometimes, as in the case of Lord Byron, 
too partial. Fiatjustitia : ruat coelum / If it be true, 
it cannot do harm : — if it be false, let it be con- 
futed! 

What I have done, though little noticed by the 
tlurong of vulgar readers and fashionable triflers, has 
gradually and imperceptibly mixed itself Tvith the 
durable literature of my country. I have contributed 
to the revival of a taste for its older authors; I have 
•withdrawn several meritorious old poets from obli- 
vion ; I have recovered a volume of original poems 
(never before printed), of WiUiam Browne, the fa- 
vourite pastoral poet of James the First's reign ; I 
have exhibited proofs of the genius of William Her- 
bert Earl of Pembroke, which shew that he deserved 
the beautiful eulogy bestowed on him by Lord Cla- 
rendon ; I have cast the truth and the interest of his- 
tory on the peerage of my country; — I have endea- 
voured, — (though with too little success), — to expose 
the false philosophy of gambling Jews : — I have some- 
times been visited by the still small voice of genius, 
virtue, and learning, to cheer me : but I have been left 
to struggle alone by those who ought to have extended 
to me an aiding hand; — the mean deserters of their 
blood, whose offered services I now reject with scorn : 
— I have been plotted against by treachery, fraud, and 
corruption ; — and I have been persecuted and calum- 
niated by the upstart power of hoary age, where in- 
tense malignity continues to increase with years; where 
prosperity still indurates; and where the breath of the 
opening grave seems but to fan the petty passions of 
low-born and mean-tempered youth ! 

I have seen so much corruption in the management 
of public affairs, — notwithstanding the boasted vigi- 
lance of our constitutional checks; I have had such 
proof of the underhand and treacherous workings of 
so many of our public functionaries, not only little—^ 
(which was to be expected) — but great; — that I am 
convinced the only peace and safety lies in retreat. I 



89 

repress the momentary ambitions tliat will sometimes 
return in spite of me ; and recall the conviction, that 
obscure quiet in new and foreign scenes is better than 
the land of early associations, where so many images 
bring with them nothing but regrets and resentments. 
In a country of new nobles and stock-gambling wealth, 
in a country where distinction^ political or literary, is 
only open to intrigue oi* noisy audacity ; — where, so 
far as aristocratical power prevails, a few families, 
raised almost within memory out of the spoils of public 
plunder, and party manoeuvre and faction, domineer,— 
where almost all its diplomatic functions, great and 
small, with all their dependencies, are confined to a 
few families, not of the best talents, or most gracious 
manners, — in such a country there is not much 
enjoyment for one who is too proud to crouch ; too 
ardent and open to conceal his opinions ; too con- 
scious of his rights to endure a neglect or sarcasm ; too 
indignant at upstart greatness and the insolence of office, 
to suppress his scorn. 

The effect of the topsy-turvy of English society in 
the last forty years is truly provoking, because it is 
made up of such contrary ingredients. Whether birth, 
or wealth, or talent, or offices, or character, were the 
adopted ground of distinction, — so long as it was ad- 
hered to, we should know our places. But the pretence 
is shifted every day ; and twenty times in a day. If it 
be birth or talent, etc. we know where to place Lord 

— — or Lord ! but then let them be consistent ; 

and abide by that on which they aflfect to rely ! Among 
intelligent people it is pretty well settled what consti- 
tutes Birth : it cannot be cut short in this way or that 
way, by fanciful lines, to suit a particular pedigree ! 
The insolence of two or three generations of office 
will not make it. If it could, then would families be 
entitled to take adi^antage of their own wrong! and 
having profited by place, gained by corruption, at the 
public expense, found upon it a new injustice, by in- 
sulting those from whom they had already drawn un- 
deserved profits and advancements ! It is by a critical 



90' 

examlnalion of one branch of the minuter details of 
the history of Europe, especially of France, Flanders, 
and England, from the commencement of the ninth 
century, that we must extract those general principles 
as to the tests of distinctions of Birth, which alone^ 
from a certain sort of consent of ages, it is safe to 
adopt. All the illustrious families of France, Flan- 
ders, and England, which have been great by heredi- 
tary power and historic lustre, have sprung up in the 
male line not long after the ages of the reign of the 
house of Charlemagne ; and from all the wide and 
laborious investigation which I have made, have, with 
an uniformity which is quite astonishing, so sprung up 
by the aid of early marriages with Charlemagne's blood. 
By a set of Tables, which I am carrying through the 
press, (for private use,) I shall be able to prove this to 
a demonstration from cotemporary and original histo- 
rians,* whose authority cannot be disputed. I call on 
those, who choose to rely on the airs — perhaps the 
emptiness — of birth— lo abide by it, — or to abandon 
it! I care not which ! —Let them trust to their bril- 
liant and energetic talents ; and their highly-cultivated 
minds, if they will! 

It is a misfortune that the English aristocracy have 
not in general any enlightened knowledge of their own 
history. Perhaps they may have such a silly book as 
Debrett's'\ Peerage at their fingers' ends : but this is a 
book exactly calculated to level lustre with obscurity. 
There Lord Byron makes not a greater figure than 
Lord Callan, Lord Milford, or Lord Eardley. 

"* I have been enabled to do this by the aid of the Royal 
Library at Paris, the richest ia Europe, to which I have 
found every sort of accommodation, by the admirable 
courtesy and intelligence of Mr. Yan Praet. This Library 
is alone sufficient to make Paris a most desirable residence 
to me. 

f Poor Debrett is dead: the Editor who has succeeded 
him knows nothing of his business. The new edition is 
full of the grossest bluciders — not merely of omission — but 
of commission. 



91 

Of that class of historic families, to v^Llch I have 
alluded as early connected with the blood of Charle- 
magne, are the Monimorencies of France. I mention 
these as an instance which will not be invidious, or 
questionable. The English Percys would be the same, 
were they of the male line. The Nei^illes^ (Earls of 
Abergavenny,) are so. Before the eleventh or twelfth 
century, it is sometimes impossible to connect the link 
by evidence of positive demonstration : but there is a 
species of circumstantial historical deduction, which has 
been especially adopted by Duchesne^ one of our most 
authentic and profound genealogists, which approxi- 
mates in such a manner to certainty, as to leave no 
doubt in well-endowed and well-exercised minds. I 
believe that all these conjectural origins have stood the 
test of two centuries of subsequent enquiry ; and that 
in many cases they have been absolutely confirmed by 
the subsequent discovery of positive proof. 

But I must not end with a subject which the world 
has been taught to consider frivolous. This Note is 
published as an Apology for the suppression of Memoirs, 
which I had announced. To give this Note weight, I 
have pressed into it such matter as I have considered not 
irrelevant to the subject. It contains a melange of my 
opinions on the times; — frank at least, — if they should 
want accuracy or depth ! The rambling manner, the 
alleged absence of all plan and method, will be cri- 
ticised and censured : — but what will not be criticised 
and censured? Readers now live on the food of bitter 
and poignant criticism ! Surely a Note, at any rate, 
may be allowed exemption from much arrangement, or 
any deeply formed design. The topics which were an- 
nounced as forming the subject of the Fragment of 
Memoirs now declared to be suppressed, would have 
excited more interest in general readers, than those on 
which I have here touched :< — but I congratulate myself 
on having withdrawn them : they were mixed up with 
opinions of the times and of characters, which, if the 
force of observation will not permit the judgment to 
be blind to, a love of quiet may render it prudent to 



92 

keep to oneself. The matter of the present Note is 
mainly literary : the value of the opinions, whether 
much or little, will be better determined in the sobriety 
of reflection, than under the first prejudices of the 
reigning taste of the day. 

Paris, i^th Sept, 1825. 



THE END, 



LATELY PUBLISHED BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



1. Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of 

Lord Bjron. 

London, printed for Longman and Co. (July) 1824. ^^^ 
vol. 8vo. 10s. 6d. 

2. An Impartial Literary Portrait of Lord Byron. 

Paris, printed for A. and W. Galignani, (Feb.) 1825, 12mo« 
S francs* 



3. Recollections of Foreign Travel. 

London, printed for Longman and Co. (Feb.) 1825, 2 to1s» 
8yo. 14s, 



A, Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, — originally 
written by Edw. Philips (Milton's nephew), 
3d Edit, with Prefaces, Notes, etc. 

Geneva, printed for Cherbuliez, (Oct.) 1S24> 1 vol. 8vo. 
(100 copies only.) 



IN THE PRESS, AND NEARLY FINISHED. 



STEMMATA ILLUSTRIA, PRJECIPUE REGIA. 

Paris, printed by J. Smith, Rue Montmorency, 1 vol. foL 



N. B. This work is intended for private use, for gratuitous 
distribution among persons of curiosity, and for deposit in 
great Public Libraries. 

It contains 230 Tables of laborious deductions of descent 
from Charlemagne, which, though applied to a particular 
family, connect themselves throughout with General His- 
tory. The whole is the result of critical research among 
the original and best authorities — partly furnished by the 
Royal Library at Paris ; and the origin of the Royal Houses 
of Charlemagne, Capet, and Hapsburg is traced with scru- 
pulous enquiry. It contains the genealogies of almost all 
the early Counts of provinces of Flanders and France ; and 
of all the early post-Norman Baronage of England, who at- 
tained, then or subsequently, Earldoms. 

The impression is limited to 100 copies; 



IN PREPARATION, AND TO BE PUBLISHED IN 
THE FOLLOWING WINTER OR SPRING. 



MEMOIRS OF MY OWN TIMES, 

AND OF 

BIY COTEMPORARIES LITERARY AND POUTI« 
CAL, FOR FIFTY YEARS, FROM 1775. 

By Sir Egerton Buydges, Bart., etc., etc. 



London, printed for Harding, Trlphook, and Lepard. 2 or 
3 vols. 8vo. 

N. B. This is the work, of which a prepared Fragment is 
in this Note announced to be suppressed. The plan has 
Been altered ; and from a private it has been changed to a 
public Memoir. The characters will be drawn freely, in the 
lights in which they have appeared to me : and I shall endea- 
vour to trace the fluctuations of society, the changes of pro- 
perty, the decay and extinctions of families, and the influ- 
ence and consequences of the growing weight of new wealth. 
The principles and results of Mr. Pitt's two administrations 

will be more especially investigated. 

S. E.B. 



Z^ 1> 



jB>y 


>'!> 


::3P9 


3> 


r3i>> 


'J> 


^Pl^:> 


^:5> 






TI3pr> 


^^3> 


JU8r>o 


>>"5i> 


J^ZKD ■ > 


.^5> 


_~]j^^~.^j 


'>~Jl» 


JE!3l&> !:>;» ■ 


>:» 


Z!3K>^'i> 


oe^ 


_33i^^>_^ , 


aEs> 


Z3iS^5j> 


>:^ 


,IZB^^^ ■' 








~.^^T> 1 ^ > 


''">"^fc 


^^> i^ 


3^^l; 


^^ 


:»>>>/ J 


. ;3^:j 


»3x 


> 7>~^ 


3^r>^ 


y 


»-> >^ 


^ =^- 


3p>^ :>. > ^ 


>3>:> > . 


^ ^> 


>3)II^ ) 


>-3 


»^ ^ 


>*■ ^ 


»:> ) " 


^ ^ 


:>>:> ^ 


^ - 



-;-^ 


^^~») 


> 


>11> 


^"> 


^> .^ .^ 


> 


>1^ 




>o^ 


^> 


:>^> 


> "'S> 


>>i 


^ : 


>^' 


' , ■:i5>'^ 


>:>>^ 


^-1; 


>jr> 




"^^^ 


:j» 


■>5>1 


> 


.>rjBi^- . 






?i> 


■5^ 

y i 




1- 


^'>> 


■;^ > 


:» 


^> 


^•^ 




:» 


jy ' 


^ »> 


► ^ ^'" 


» 




;:>> 


-; >. 


j^^ 


-y^ 


»3 


► > , 


i» 


i^ 


x>;> 


h ■ "' 


:» 


X^ 


>">".> 


^ 


:>:> 


'>^ 


^> ~' 


^ 


::>> 


3z^ 




> 


:» 


'''iI3^ 




> 


^i>:> 


■r'5~3fc 





> 






.^ » - 



_::► 3 y^^ 




Z]B^ 


I>:r> ): ^ 


) 


'^^j^ 




.r-. ■ 


^ 


J^UI 




^ 


13^ TZ^ • 3>) /) 


1> 


Z3I^ 


i^ zy ^ j>o -> 


2> 


^ ZX^ 


► ^ >„>-> 


^ 


-» 


3 ^ T>0 
>, 3 3 


1 


1 


> 3 W> 


5 

^ 


5 




:o 


> 



m 






J> I> 






m 






-=^S 


3 


1 




' lZjI 


l» 


^ 




"^3 


^ 


'^ _ 


3 


1^ 


■>2^~^ 


1^ 


^ 


H^ 


"^^ 


Bb 




31^ 




ZK> 



":> T»' ^ 



>> ^ 



^ . >:^£) _^ 

> ^m. ' 

> 3»WDD 

• 3>:>2>De> 

3» ^dT' — 









2>3J>2> 



^^3^^:^ 





^^^^^ 


3>3^ 




^^> 


:^3u 




1^^^ 


i>^ 




^^^ 


>^^ 






M ^^ 






^ -^ 

^ 




F 

^ ' 


T^^^l^ 


^ 






"2)>I^TS>^^^'^jB^ 


"^ "'" 


Ty^~'^ ^3S>:^im^ 


=^ ■;. 


55^1^ ^Si J'^uTX^ 


^^ 


"23r^_z^3\»Di> 


— ^ ■' 


j>)r]3^i3^>^£2J^ 


=^ ■ 


^S^t^ ^!36>^ :^36>^ 


"^ ^ 


3^ ^>^^^^ 


^ 


i>:>:i>>>30^ 


'T>'^ 


^> »y>^» 


I> - 2^-^ JLM.^J^jm^ 




r>:> x> \;»3E> 


3> 


>3>3>^ 


y^x^ 


y^JK> 




>>3 )>>:)3K> 


'^ - 


gr>^3^,:3E>i 


> 




; J2K^ 


^ ^^PE3^ 


^ 


3:> ^> y 
yy 3 :> 


>* "ZJK^ 


y'ZJK^ 


:> 


>o ^ >3^t^ 


^ 


>:» 3^>^^ 


3 


;>;» ^3> j» 


3j«:)> :3 3>q8» 


a» 3>3^ 


^:>:> 


3 3 ) __j^^ 


X)0 


-3 3:> J]J^ 


2>^ 


•3 ^ > H^P^ 


»:^ 


3 3 I) _ZIB^ 


>» 


3 J>- !> 128^ 



